17-letter words containing a, e, o, l, t, r
- enlarged prostate — disorder of male reproductive gland
- environmentalists — Plural form of environmentalist.
- equal opportunity — policies that bar discrimination
- equatorial guinea — a republic of W Africa, consisting of Río Muni on the mainland and the island of Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea, with four smaller islands: ceded by Portugal to Spain in 1778; gained independence in 1968. Official languages: Spanish and French. Religion: Roman Catholic majority. Currency: franc. Capital: Malabo. Pop: 704 000 (2013 est). Area: 28 049 sq km (10 830 sq miles)
- ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
- ethnopharmacology — The scientific study correlating ethnic groups, their health, and how it relates to their physical habits and methodology in creating and using medicines.
- exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
- exfoliating cream — a granular cosmetic preparation that removes dead cells from the skin's surface
- external relation — a relation that does not hold between its relata, as 4 is greater than 2
- extrasolar planet — any other celestial body revolving around a star, illuminated by light from that star
- fall off the roof — to drop or descend under the force of gravity, as to a lower place through loss or lack of support.
- fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
- fellow countryman — sb of same nationality
- fendalton tractor — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
- fermentation lock — a valve placed on the top of bottles of fermenting wine to allow bubbles to escape
- ferroelectric ram — Ferroelectric Random Access Memory
- fingerling potato — a finger-shaped potato
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- floating currency — a currency that is free to fluctuate against other currencies in accordance with market forces
- flowering currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes sanguineum, growing to 2 to 3 metres (6 to 9ft) in height, with red, crimson, yellow, or white flowers: family Saxifragaceae
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fluvioterrestrial — (of animals) able to live in rivers and on land
- follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
- footmen's gallery — the rearmost section of seats in the balcony of an English theater, especially in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
- for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
- foreign relations — (used with a singular verb) the field of foreign affairs: an expert in foreign relations.
- formative element — a morpheme that serves as an affix, not as a base, or root, in word formation.
- fort leonard wood — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in SW Missouri, SW of Rolla.
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- four-star general — high-ranking military officer
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- fraternal society — a club or other association, usually of men, having a limited membership and devoted to professional, religious, charitable, or social activities.
- front-line player — a regular player on a sports team or one who plays in the farthest forward position
- frostbite sailing — the sport of sailing in temperate latitudes during the winter despite cold weather.
- full load current — A full load current is the largest current that a motor or other device is designed to carry under particular conditions.
- functional isomer — any of several structural isomers that have the same molecular formula but with the atoms connected in different ways and therefore falling into different functional groups.
- garbage collector — refuse collector, dustman
- garden heliotrope — the common valerian, Valeriana officinalis, especially when cultivated as an ornamental.
- genealogical tree — family tree.
- general sarmiento — a city in E Argentina, a suburb of Buenos Aires.
- generalized other — an individual's internalized impression of societal norms and expectations.
- genetic algorithm — (GA) An evolutionary algorithm which generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" or "genome". Chromosomes are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. "Crossover", the kind of recombination of chromosomes found in sexual reproduction in nature, is often also used in GAs. Here, an offspring's chromosome is created by joining segments choosen alternately from each of two parents' chromosomes which are of fixed length. GAs are useful for multidimensional optimisation problems in which the chromosome can encode the values for the different variables being optimised.
- geothermal energy — Geothermal energy is energy from temperature differences inside the earth's crust.
- gestatorial chair — a ceremonial chair on which the pope is carried
- gigaelectron volt — one billion electron-volts. Abbreviation: GeV, Gev.
- glove compartment — a compartment in the dashboard of an automobile for storing small items.
- go for the collar — to go without a hit in a game
- go the extra mile — make an exceptional effort
- goldbeater's skin — the prepared outside membrane of the large intestine of the ox, used by goldbeaters to lay between the leaves of the metal while they beat it into gold leaf.