18-letter words containing a, d
- jet-enamelled ware — English Worcester porcelain ware of the 18th century, transfer-printed in black.
- jimenez de quesada — Gonzalo [gawn-thah-law,, -sah-] /gɔnˈθɑ lɔ,, -ˈsɑ-/ (Show IPA), 1497?–1579, Spanish explorer and conqueror in South America.
- jose de san martin — José de [haw-se th e] /hɔˈsɛ ðɛ/ (Show IPA), 1778–1850, South American general and statesman, born in Argentina: leader in winning independence for Argentina, Peru, and Chile; protector of Peru 1821–22.
- juan ponce de leon — Juan [hwahn] /ʰwɑn/ (Show IPA), c1460–1521, Spanish explorer.
- justice department — the United States federal department for enforcing federal laws
- kawasaki's disease — a disease of children that causes a rash, fever, and swelling of the lymph nodes and often damages the heart muscle
- keep at a distance — to be reserved or cool toward; treat aloofly
- keep one's hand in — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- kirtland's warbler — a wood warbler, Dendroica kirtlandii, breeding only in north-central Michigan and wintering in the Bahamas, bluish gray above, striped with black and pale yellow below: an endangered species.
- kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
- knight of the road — a tramp
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- known lazy bastard — (abuse) (KLB) A term, used among technical support staff, for a user who repeatedly asks for help with problems whose solutions are clearly explained in the documentation, and persists in doing so after having been told to RTFM. KLBs are singled out for special treatment (i.e. ridicule), especially if they have been heard to say "It's so boring to read the manual! Why don't you just tell me?". The deepest pit in Hell is reserved for KLBs whose questions reveal total ignorance of the basic concepts (e.g., "How do I make a font in Excel?", "Where do I turn on my RAM?"), and who refuse to accept that their questions are neither simple nor well-formed.
- labeled bracketing — a representation of the constituent structure of a string, as a word or sentence, comparable to a tree diagram, in which each constituent is shown in brackets and given a subscript grammatical label, with each bracketed item corresponding to a node in a tree diagram.
- labrador retriever — one of a breed of retrievers having a short, thick, oily, solid black or yellow coat, raised originally in Newfoundland.
- 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.
- land grant college — a state university established with a grant of public land
- land-grant college — a U.S. college or university (land-grant university) entitled to support from the federal government under the provisions of the Morrill Acts.
- landscape gardener — sb who designs gardens
- landscape painting — art: depicting natural scenery
- laning and zierler — (language) Possibly the first true working algebraic compiler. Written by J.H. Laning Jr and N. Zierler in 1953-1954 to run on MIT's Whirlwind computer.
- laugh like a drain — to laugh loudly and coarsely
- lay at the door of — to blame (a person) for
- lay down your arms — If soldiers lay down their arms, they stop fighting and give up their weapons.
- lay one's hands on — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- laying on of hands — Theology. a rite in which the cleric's hands are placed on the head of a person being confirmed, ordained, or the like.
- learned profession — any of the three vocations of theology, law, and medicine, commonly held to require highly advanced learning. Compare profession (def 1).
- light displacement — the weight of a ship with all its permanent equipment, excluding the weight of cargo, persons, ballast, dunnage, and fuel, but usually including the weight of permanent ballast and water used to operate steam machinery.
- limit-state design — a design criterion specifying that with acceptable probabilities a structure will not reach a limit state in which it either is unfit for the use for which it was designed (unavailability limit state) or fails (ultimate limit state)
- limiting adjective — (in English and some other languages) one of a small group of adjectives that modify the nouns to which they are applied by restricting rather than describing or qualifying. This, some, and certain are limiting adjectives.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
- literal-mindedness — the quality or state of tending to take words in their literal sense
- little namaqualand — an arid coastal region in the S part of Namibia, extending into the Cape of Good Hope province of the Republic of South Africa, divided by the Orange River into two regions, one in Namibia (Great Namaqualand) the other in South Africa (Little Namaqualand) inhabited by the Nama.
- little spotted cat — a small New World tiger cat, Felis tigrinus, ranging from Costa Rica to northern Argentina.
- little st. bernard — Great, a mountain pass between SW Switzerland and NW Italy, in the Pennine Alps: Napoleon led his army through it in 1800; location of a hospice. 8108 feet (2470 meters) high.
- logarithmus dualis — (mathematics) (ld) Latin for logarithm base two. More commonly written as "log" with a subscript "2". Roughly the number of bits required to represent an integer.
- long-distance call — phone call: not local area
- lunitidal interval — the period of time between the moon's transit and the next high lunar tide.
- madagascar jasmine — a Madagascan twining, woody vine, Stephanotis floribunda, of the milkweed family, having waxy-white, fragrant flowers.
- madeira embroidery — broderie anglaise.
- magnesium peroxide — a white, tasteless, water-insoluble powder, MgO 2 , used as an antiseptic and as an oxidizing and bleaching agent.
- magnetic induction — Also called magnetic flux density. a vector quantity used as a measure of a magnetic field. Symbol: B.
- magnetic recording — the process of recording sound or other data on magnetic tape, wire, etc.
- magnetogasdynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- maison-de-molieres — Comédie Française.
- make no difference — to have no effect; not matter
- make someone tired — to annoy or vex someone
- make up one's mind — (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
- malicious wounding — the intentional violent wounding or injuring of someone