Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source
00:10
00:09
00:08
00:07
00:06
00:05
00:04
00:03
00:02
00:01
| a chattering or flighty, light-headed person. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source
hartal
in Ceylon, general strike, organized in 1953 by Marxist parties to express public dissatisfaction over the rise in the cost of living, especially the cost of rice. (Generically, the word hartal means "strike" in most North Indian languages.) Because of a chronic shortage of rice, the Ceylonese government since World War II had rationed rice and instituted government rice subsidies to keep the price of rice stable in the face of a fluctuating world market. By 1952 the subsidies accounted for 20 percent of government expenditure. In July 1953, Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake of the United National Party drastically reduced the subsidies, causing the price of rice to triple.
Learn more about hartal with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Cite This Source
