| 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. |
| Lawrence (lôr'əns) Pronunciation Key
American physicist who in 1929 built the first cyclotron, which he used to study the structure of the atom, transmute elements, and produce artificial radiation. His work laid the foundation for the development of the atomic bomb. |
lawrence
city, seat (1855) of Douglas county, eastern Kansas, U.S. It lies on the Kansas River. It was founded in 1854 by antislavery radicals who had come to Kansas under the auspices of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to outvote proslavery settlers and thus make Kansas a "free" state. The city was named for Amos A. Lawrence, a New England textile manufacturer who funded the company's settlement efforts. It was a noted station on the Underground Railroad by which slaves escaped into free territory. As a Jayhawker (abolitionist) headquarters, the town was sacked in 1856 by a proslavery militia under David Rice Atchison, a former Democratic senator from Missouri, and in 1863 by Confederate guerrillas under the command of William Clarke Quantrill, who massacred more than 150 citizens and burned much of the city.
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