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18-letter words containing a, c, r, o, t, i

  • hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
  • hyperconcentration — the act of concentrating; the state of being concentrated.
  • hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
  • hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
  • hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
  • in accordance with — conforming to
  • in comparison with — when compared to
  • in inverted commas — If you say in inverted commas after a word or phrase, you are indicating that it is inaccurate or unacceptable in some way, or that you are quoting someone else.
  • in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
  • indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
  • induction training — training intended to enable new staff and recruits to do their work
  • inductive relation — A relation R between domains D and E is inductive if for all chains d1 .. dn in D and e1 .. en in E,
  • information centre — help desk, office
  • information office — an office where you can go to get information
  • inspector of taxes — an official of HMRC whose work is to assess individuals' income tax liability
  • instruction manual — how-to, usage guide
  • integrating factor — a factor that upon multiplying a differential equation with the right-hand side equal to zero makes the equation integrable, usually by making the resulting expression an exact differential of some function.
  • intercartilaginous — (anatomy) Within cartilage.
  • intercommunication — to communicate mutually, as people.
  • interior decorator — a person whose profession is the execution of interior design.
  • internal secretion — a secretion, esp a hormone, that is absorbed directly into the blood
  • international code — a code used at sea by the navies of certain nations, using a series of flags representing digits from zero through nine.
  • involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
  • iomega corporation — (company, storage)   A storage device manufacturer whose major products are the Zip and Jaz removable disk drives and Ditto tape drives. They became popular with an early product called the Bernoulli Box. These products fall in line with their focus set in 1994 "to help people manage their stuff". The company's stated aim is to create portable, fast, large and cheap storage solutions. Iomega's major competitor in the growing market for removable disks is SyQuest, who seem to always be a few weeks behind them. In general, Iomega target the Small Office/Home Office. They are also investigating the growing digital photography market which also needs large removable storage devices. Iomega's president and CEO is Kim Edwards. They have nearly 2000 employees in offices world-wide. Revenue for the quarter ending Dec 1996 was $371 million and net income was $20 million. Headquarters: Roy, Utah, USA.
  • ionization chamber — a device for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation, consisting of a tube containing a low pressure gas and two electrodes between which a high voltage is maintained. The current between the electrodes is a function of the intensity of the radiation
  • isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
  • italian corn salad — a southern European plant, Valerianella eriocarpa, of the valerian family, having edible, spoon-shaped, hairy leaves and dense clusters of pale-blue flowers.
  • italian provincial — designating or of a style of rural, Italian furniture of the 18th and 19th cent., with straight lines and simple decoration, usually of fruitwood or mahogany
  • jacobite rebellion — the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1715 led by James Francis Edward Stuart
  • japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
  • killer application — a highly innovative, very powerful, or extremely useful computer application; esp one sufficiently important as to justify purchase of the equipment or software
  • knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
  • lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
  • lactose intolerant — cannot digest milk
  • lake pontchartrain — a shallow lagoon in SE Louisiana, linked with the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow channel, the Rigolets: resort and fishing centre. Area: 1620 sq km (625 sq miles)
  • lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
  • lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
  • lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
  • linear accelerator — an accelerator in which particles are propelled in straight paths by the use of alternating electric voltages that are timed in such a way that the particles receive increasing increments of energy.
  • linear combination — a sum of products of each quantity times a constant: The expression aX + bY + cZ is a linear combination of X, Y, and Z, where a, b, and c are constants.
  • liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
  • lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • lower palaeolithic — the earliest of the three sections of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 3 million years ago and ending about 70 000 bc with the emergence of Neanderthal man
  • macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.
  • magistrates' court — law: handles minor crimes
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