18-letter words containing a, g, r, o, s
- generating station — a power station
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.
- give a person five — to greet or congratulate someone by slapping raised hands
- give someone a row — to scold someone; tell someone off
- go with the stream — to conform to the accepted standards
- going to jerusalem — musical chairs.
- good samaritan law — a law that exempts from legal liability persons, sometimes only physicians, who give reasonable aid to strangers in grave physical distress.
- gooseneck barnacle — goose barnacle
- grains of paradise — Usually, grains of paradise. one of the pungent, peppery seeds of an African plant, Aframomum melegueta, of the ginger family, used to strengthen cordials and in veterinary medicine.
- grampian mountains — a mountain system of central Scotland, extending from the southwest to the northeast and separating the Highlands from the Lowlands. Highest peak: Ben Nevis, 1344 m (4408 ft)
- grand canyon state — Arizona (used as a nickname).
- granulation tissue — tissue formed in ulcers and in early wound healing and repair, composed largely of newly growing capillaries and so called from its irregular surface in open wounds; proud flesh.
- grass-of-parnassus — any plant belonging to the genus Parnassia, of the saxifrage family, growing in marshy areas, having broad, smooth leaves and a single, pale flower.
- grasshopper engine — a steam engine having a piston attached to one end of a beam that is hinged to an upright at the other end, the connecting rod being suspended from near the center of the beam.
- gravitational lens — a heavy, dense body, as a galaxy, that lies along our line of sight to a more distant object, as a quasar, and whose gravitational field refracts the light of that object, splitting it into multiple images as seen from the earth.
- gravitational mass — the mass of a body as measured by its gravitational attraction for other bodies.
- gray manganese ore — manganite.
- grease the palm of — to influence by giving money to; bribe
- great expectations — a novel (1861) by Charles Dickens.
- great pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
- greater yellowlegs — either of two American shorebirds having yellow legs, Tringa melanoleuca (greater yellowlegs) or T. flavipes (lesser yellowlegs)
- greenhouse warming — the increase in the mean temperature of the earth attributed to the greenhouse effect
- grosse pointe park — a city in SE Michigan, near Detroit.
- guidance counselor — advisor in schools
- hash house slinger — a person who serves in a cheap cafe
- histomorphological — histology.
- historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
- horizontal tasting — a tasting of wines from the same year but from different vineyards, producers, etc.
- horseless carriage — an automobile: The horse and buggy were eventually replaced by the horseless carriage.
- human rights group — a group that campaigns for human rights
- hungry programmers — (body) A group of programmers producing free software.
- hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
- inquisitor-general — the head of the Spanish court of Inquisition
- intercartilaginous — (anatomy) Within cartilage.
- iverson's language — APL, which went unnamed for many years.
- james-lange theory — a theory that emotions are caused by bodily sensations; for example, we are sad because we weep
- johannes gutenberg — Johannes [yoh-hahn-uh s] /yoʊˈhɑn əs/ (Show IPA), (Johann Gensfleisch) c1400–68, German printer: credited with invention of printing from movable type.
- king james version — Authorized Version.
- king's regulations — (in Britain and the Commonwealth when the sovereign is male) the code of conduct for members of the armed forces that deals with discipline, aspects of military law, etc
- lagrange's theorem — the theorem that the order of each subgroup of a finite group is a factor of the order of the group.
- law of segregation — the principle, originated by Gregor Mendel, stating that during the production of gametes the two copies of each hereditary factor segregate so that offspring acquire one factor from each parent.
- lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- 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-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
- low-start mortgage — a mortgage in which interest only is repaid for a fixed period at the outset, to make it more affordable
- lubber grasshopper — plains grasshopper.
- 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".