24-letter words containing a, d, e, n, o, l
- environmentally friendly — that has no or the least possible impact on the environment
- exponential distribution — a continuous single-parameter distribution used esp when making statements about the length of life of certain materials or waiting times between randomly occurring events. Its density function is p(x) = λe–λx for positive λ and nonnegative x, and it is a special case of the gamma distribution
- face as long as a fiddle — a dismal or gloomy facial expression
- federal power commission — FPC.
- federal trade commission — FTC.
- ferdinand lewis alcindor — (Ferdinand) Lew(is, Jr.) original name of Abdul-Jabbar.
- floating decimal (point) — a decimal (point) whose position is not fixed
- floating point underflow — underflow
- flue gas desulfurization — Flue gas desulfurization is the removal of pollutants containing sulfur from flue gas.
- footloose and fancy-free — If you describe someone as footloose and fancy-free, you mean that they are not married or in a similar relationship, and you therefore consider them to have very few responsibilities or commitments.
- geographical determinism — the theory that human activity is determined by geographical conditions
- get hot under the collar — If someone gets hot under the collar about something, they get very annoyed, angry, or excited about it.
- glycogen storage disease — any of several inherited disorders of glycogen metabolism that result in excess accumulation of glycogen in various organs of the body.
- greater london authority — local government body of UK capital
- ground-fault interrupter — a circuit breaker that senses currents caused by ground faults and quickly shuts off power before damage can occur to generating equipment.
- guaranteed annual income — Also called guaranteed income. compensation provided by the government to any family or individual whose annual income falls below a specified level.
- have carnal knowledge of — to have sexual intercourse with
- head and shoulders above — vastly superior to
- hit the nail on the head — a slender, typically rod-shaped rigid piece of metal, usually in any of numerous standard lengths from a fraction of an inch to several inches and having one end pointed and the other enlarged and flattened, for hammering into or through wood, other building materials, etc., as used in building, in fastening, or in holding separate pieces together.
- implicit differentiation — a method of finding the derivative of an implicit function by taking the derivative of each term with respect to the independent variable while keeping the derivative of the dependent variable with respect to the independent variable in symbolic form and then solving for that derivative.
- in words of one syllable — simply; bluntly
- independent logical file — (database) (ILF) One kind of dynamic database management system. Examples of ILF databases are INQUIRE, ADABAS, NOMAD, FOCUS and DATACOM.
- industrial correspondent — a journalist who specializes in reporting the industrial news
- interlocking directorate — a corporate directorate that includes one or more members who serve simultaneously in the directorates of other corporations.
- internal auditory meatus — the canal extending through the petrous portion of the temporal bone, through which the glossopharyngeal nerve, the facial nerve, and the auditory nerve and artery pass.
- international morse code — a form of Morse code used in international radiotelegraphy.
- interventional radiology — an application of radiology that enables minimally invasive surgery to be performed with the aid of simultaneous radiological imaging of the field of operation within the body
- irritable bowel syndrome — any combination of common disturbances of the bowel, as diarrhea or constipation, occurring with abdominal pain, sometimes accompanied by psychological stress. Abbreviation: IBS.
- knowledge representation — The subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with designing and using systems for storing knowledge - facts and rules about some subject. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to represent. In order to manipulate this knowledge we must specify how the abstract conceptualisation is represented as a concrete data structure. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualisation.
- knowledge sharing effort — (project) An ARPA project developing techniques and methods for building large-scale knowledge bases which are sharable and reusable.
- lady washington geranium — show geranium.
- land of the midnight sun — any of those countries containing land within the Arctic Circle where there is a midnight sun in midsummer, especially Norway, Sweden, or Finland.
- law of supply and demand — the theory that prices are determined by the interaction of supply and demand: an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply
- lead someone by the nose — to make someone do unquestioningly all one wishes; dominate someone
- least common denominator — the smallest number that is a common denominator of a given set of fractions.
- leave no stone un turned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
- linear (induction) motor — an electric motor that produces thrust in a direct line, as distinguished from the rotary motion produced by a rotary engine, by the interaction of a moving magnetic field and the current induced by the field
- liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
- logical block addressing — (storage) (LBA) A hard disk sector addressing scheme used on all SCSI hard disks, and on ATA-2 conforming IDE hard disks. The addressing conversion is performed by the hard disk firmware. Prior to LBA, combined limitations of IBM PC BIOS and ATA restricted the useful capacity of IDE hard disks on IBM PCs and compatibles to 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 16 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 528 million bytes = 504 megabytes. Modern BIOSes select LBA mode automatically, and work around the 1024-cylinder BIOS limit by representing a hard disk to the OS as having e.g. half as many cylinders and twice as many heads. However, there is still an unbreakable BIOS disk size limit of 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 256 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 8 gigabytes, but modern OSes (including Windows 9x, Windows NT and Linux) are not affected by it, since they issue direct LBA-based calls, bypassing the BIOS hard disk services completely.
- long-spined sea scorpion — Cottus bubalis or Taurulus bubalis
- longitudinal coefficient — the ratio of the immersed volume of a hull to the product obtained by multiplying its length on the water line by the immersed area of the midship transverse section, all assuming a given depth of immersion of the hull.
- low voltage differential — (hardware) (LVD) A method of driving SCSI cables that will be formalised in the SCSI-3 specifications. LVD uses less power than the current differential drive (HVD), is less expensive and will allow the higher speeds of Ultra-2 SCSI. LVD requires 3.3 Volts DC instead of 5 Volts DC for HVD.
- lunar (excursion) module — the component of the Apollo spacecraft used to carry astronauts to the moon's surface and return them to the command and service modules in lunar orbit
- mediterranean flour moth — a small cosmopolitan moth, Anagasta kuehniella, whose larvae damage stored foodstuffs, as grain and flour.
- medium-scale integration — MSI.
- multiple-valued function — function (def 4b).
- nalbuphine hydrochloride — an opiate drug used as a painkiller
- near field communication — a short-range wireless communication system that uses radio waves to enable a phone or other mobile device to interact with another device or card reader: Near Field Communication essentially lets your phone replace your credit cards. Abbreviation: NFC.
- negative acknowledgement — 1. (character) (NAK) The mnemonic for ASCII character 21. Sometimes used as the response to receipt of a corrupted packet of information. Opposite of acknowledgement. 2. (communications) (NAK) Any message transmitted to indicate that some data has been received incorrectly, for example it may have a checksum or message length error. A NAK message allows the sender to distinguish a message which has been received in a corrupted state from one which is not received at all. An alternative is to use only ACK messages, in which case the non-receipt of an ACK after a certain time is counted as a NAK but gives no information about the integrity of the communications channel. See also ACK.
- network addressable unit — (networking) (NAU) The SNA term for an addressable entity. Examples include PUs, LUs, and SSCPs.