percy

English - English

Definition of percy in English English dictionary

An English surname

A male given name, transferred use of the surname since the Middle Ages

American novelist. Influenced by the European existentialists, his works, including The Moviegoer (1961), explore human alienation. Gilchrist Percy Carlyle Grainger Percy Aldridge George Percy Grainger Lewis Percy Wyndham Newton Huey Percy Percy John Percy Walker Shelley Percy Bysshe Snow Charles Percy

{i} male first name

transferred use of the surname since the Middle Ages, also used as a pet form of Piers and Percival

United States writer whose novels explored human alienation (1916-1990)

English soldier killed in a rebellion against Henry IV (1364-1403)

English soldier killed in a rebellion against Henry IV (1364-1403) United States writer whose novels explored human alienation (1916-1990)

Related Terms

Percy Aldridge Grainger

orig. George Percy Grainger born July 8, 1882, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia died Feb. 20, 1961, White Plains, N.Y., U.S. Australian-born U.S. composer and pianist. After studying music in Frankfurt, he established himself as a piano virtuoso in England, while also pursuing ethnomusicological interest, collecting folk tunes in England and Denmark. He moved to the U.S. permanently in 1914, teaching in Chicago and New York, but invested much energy in establishing an ethnomusicological centre at the University of Melbourne. Though an inveterate experimenter in the realms of timbre, rhythm, harmony, and texture, he is known for his tuneful short works for orchestra, piano, and concert band, including Country Gardens, Molly on the Shore, Mock Morris, and Lincolnshire Posy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

{i} Percy Shelley (1792-1822), English poet and husband of novelist Mary Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

a British poet of the Romantic Movement, who disliked religion and believed strongly in political freedom. His most famous works were written after 1818 when he went to live in Italy with his wife Mary Shelley, and they include Adonais, written in memory of the poet John Keats, Prometheus Unbound, and To a Skylark (1792-1822). born Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, Eng. died July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Tuscany English Romantic poet. The heir to rich estates, Shelley was a rebellious youth who was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for refusing to admit authorship of The Necessity of Atheism. Later that year he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner. He gradually channeled his passionate pursuit of personal love and social justice into poetry. His first major poem, Queen Mab (1813), is a utopian political epic revealing his progressive social ideals. In 1814 he eloped to France with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (see Mary Shelley); in 1816, after Harriet drowned herself, they were married. In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy. Away from British politics, he became less intent on social reform and more devoted to expressing his ideals in poetry. He composed the verse tragedy The Cenci (1819) and his masterpiece, the lyric drama Prometheus Unbound (1820), which was published with some of his finest shorter poems, including "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark." Epipsychidion (1821) is a Dantean fable about the relationship of sexual desire to spiritual love and artistic creation. Adonais (1821) commemorates the death of John Keats. Shelley drowned at age 29 while sailing in a storm off the Italian coast, leaving unfinished his last and possibly greatest visionary poem, The Triumph of Life

Percy Carlyle Gilchrist

born Dec. 27, 1851, Lyme Regis, Dorset, Eng. died Dec. 16, 1935, England British metallurgist. In 1876-77, with his cousin Sidney Gilchrist Thomas (1850-85), he devised the basic Bessemer process of making steel in Bessemer converters from phosphorus-containing pig iron. In the Thomas-Gilchrist process, the lining used in the converter is basic rather than acidic, and it captures the acidic phosphorus oxides formed upon blowing air through molten iron made from the high-phosphorus iron ore prevalent in Europe. The process subsequently became widely used

Percy Shelley

{i} Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet and husband of novelist Mary Shelley

Percy Wyndham Lewis

born Nov. 18, 1882, on a yacht near Amherst, Nova Scotia, Can. died March 7, 1957, London, Eng. English artist and writer. The founder and principal exponent of Vorticism, Lewis began a short-lived Vorticist review titled Blast in 1914. His first novel, Tarr, appeared in 1918. The Childermass (1928) was followed by the huge satirical novel The Apes of God (1930) and The Revenge for Love (1937). In the 1930s he produced some of his most noted paintings, including The Surrender of Barcelona (1936). He also wrote essays, short stories, and two admired memoirs. Notorious in the 1930s for championing fascism, he later recanted those beliefs

Charles Percy Snow

later Baron Snow (of the City of Leicester) born Oct. 15, 1905, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng. died July 1, 1980, London British novelist, scientist, and government administrator. Snow was a molecular physicist at the University of Cambridge for some 20 years and served as a scientific adviser to the British government. His 11-novel sequence Strangers and Brothers (1940-70), which analyzes bureaucratic man and the corrupting influence of power, includes The Masters (1951), The New Men (1954), and Corridors of Power (1964). The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959) and later nonfiction works deal with the cultural separation between practitioners of science and literature

Huey Percy Newton

born Feb. 17, 1942, Monroe, La., U.S. died Aug. 22, 1989, Oakland, Calif. U.S. African American activist. Though illiterate when he graduated from high school, he taught himself to read before attending college. He met Bobby Seale (b. 1936) while attending the San Francisco School of Law, and in 1966 they formed the Black Panther Party. In 1974 Newton was accused of murder and fled to Cuba; on his return in 1977, he was freed after two trials ended in hung juries. In 1980 he received a doctorate in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 1989 he was sentenced to six months in jail for misusing money intended for a Black Panther-founded school; later that year he was discovered shot dead on a street in Oakland, Calif

John Percy

born March 23, 1817, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Eng. died June 19, 1889, London British metallurgist. He turned to metallurgy after obtaining a medical degree, and in 1848 he devised a process for extracting silver from its ores, which soon came into widespread use. He improved the Bessemer process for making steel, and he was the first to survey British iron ores. At London's Metropolitan School of Sciences, he trained a generation of metallurgists. His multivolume Treatise on Metallurgy (1861-80), though unfinished, quickly attained classic status

Walker Percy

born May 28, 1916, Birmingham, Ala., U.S. died May 10, 1990, Covington, La. U.S. novelist. He was orphaned in late childhood and was raised by a cousin in Mississippi. While working as a pathologist he contracted tuberculosis; during his recuperation he decided on a writing career and converted to Roman Catholicism. His first and best-known novel, The Moviegoer (1961), introduced his concept of malaise, a sense of spiritual emptiness characteristic of the rootless modern world. His other works, often about the search for faith and love in a New South transformed by industry and technology, include Love in the Ruins (1971), The Second Coming (1980), and The Thanatos Syndrome (1987)

Walter Percy Chrysler

{i} (1875-1940) United States car manufacturer and founder of the Chrysler Corporation in 1925

Hyphenation

Per·cy

Turkish pronunciation

pırsi

Pronunciation

/ˈpərsē/ /ˈpɜrsiː/

Etymology

[ 'p&r-sE ] (biographical name.) Norman baronial surname from a place in Normandy (Percy-en-Auge), Old French Perci , Late Latin Persiacum, from the Gallo-Roman personal name Persius.