ANNULAR, ANNULATE, &c. (Lat. _annulus_, a ring), ringed. "Annulate" is used in botany and zoology in connexion with certain plants, worms, &c. (see ANNELIDA), either marked with rings or composed of ring-like segments. The word "annulated" is also used in, heraldry and architecture. An annulated cross is one with the points ending in an "annulet" (an heraldic ring, supposed to be taken from a coat of mail), while the annulet in architecture is a small fillet round a column, which encircles the lower part of the Doric capital immediately above the neck or trachelium. The word "annulus" (for "ring") is itself used technically in geometry, astronomy, &c., and the adjective "annular" corresponds. An _annular space_ is that between an inner and outer ring. The _annular finger_ is the ring finger. An _annular eclipse_ is an eclipse of the sun in which the visible part of the latter completely encircles the dark body of the moon; for this to happen, the centres of the sun and moon, and the point on the earth where the observer is situated, must be collinear. Certain nebulae having the form of a ring are also called "annular."
ANNUNCIATION, the announcement made by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary of the incarnation of Christ (Luke i, 26-38). The Feast of the Annunciation in the Christian Church is celebrated on the 25th of March. The first authentic allusions to it are in a canon, of the council of Toledo (656), and another of the council of Constantinople "in Trullo" (692), forbidding the celebration of all festivals in Lent, excepting the Lord's day and the Feast of the Annunciation. An earlier origin has been claimed for it on the ground that it is mentioned in sermons of Athanasius and of Gregory Thaumaturgus, but both of these documents are now admitted to be spurious. A synod held at Worcester, England (1240), forbade all servile work on this feast day. See further LADY DAY.
ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE D' (1863- ), Italian novelist and poet, of Dalmatian extraction, was born at Pescara (Abruzzi) in 1863. The first years of his youth were spent in the freedom of the open fields; at sixteen he was sent to school in Tuscany. While still at school he published a small volume of verses called _Primo Vere_ (1879), in which, side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti, the then fashionable poet of _Postuma_, were some translations from the Latin, distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article. The young poet then went to Rome, where he was received as one of their own by the _Cronaca Bizantina_ group (see CARDUCCI). Here he published _Canto Nuovo_ (1882), _Terra Vergine_ (1882), _L' Intermezzo di Rime_ (1883), _Il Libro delle Vergini_ (1884), and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of _San Pantaleone_ (1886). In _Canto Nuovo_ we have admirable poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzi landscape, commented on and completed in prose by _Terra Vergine_, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. With the _Intermezzo di Rime_ we have the beginning of d'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life. Both style and contents began to startle his critics; some who had greeted him as an _enfant prodige_--Chiarini amongst others--rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst others hailed him as one bringing a current of fresh air and the impulse of a new vitality into the somewhat prim, lifeless work hitherto produced.