18-letter words containing a, l, i, g
- invisible earnings — earnings from services provided rather than goods
- iphigenia in aulis — a tragedy (408? b.c.) by Euripides.
- irregular variable — a variable star whose brightness variation is irregular.
- iverson's language — APL, which went unnamed for many years.
- king of the castle — most powerful figure
- king william's war — the war (1689–97) in which England and its American colonies and Indian allies opposed France and its Indian allies and which constituted the American phase of the War of the Grand Alliance.
- 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
- king-of-the-salmon — a ribbonfish, Trachypterus altivelis, of northern parts of the Pacific Ocean.
- 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.
- lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
- landscape painting — art: depicting natural scenery
- language universal — a trait or property of language that exists, or has the potential to exist, in all languages.
- 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
- launching ceremony — a ceremony that celebrates the launch of a ship for the first time into the water
- law of gravitation — a law stating that any two masses attract each other with a force equal to a constant (constant of gravitation) multiplied by the product of the two masses and divided by the square of the distance between them.
- 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.
- 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.
- lean manufacturing — efficiency in the production of goods
- legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
- lieutenant general — a commissioned officer ranking next below a general and next above a major general.
- lifesaving service — a private organization or government agency for general marine rescue operations.
- 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.
- lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
- lightning arrester — a device for preventing damage to radio, telephonic, or other electric equipment from lightning or other high-voltage currents, using spark gaps to carry the current to the ground without passing through the device.
- 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.
- linear programming — any of several methods for finding where a given linear function of several nonnegative variables assumes an extreme value and for determining the extreme value, the variable usually being subjected to constraints in the form of linear equalities or inequalities.
- lingual titubation — stuttering or stammering
- 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.
- logical complement — (logic) In Boolean algebra, the logical complement or negation of a Boolean value is the opposite value, given by the following truth table: A | -A --+--- T | F F | T -A is also written as A with a bar over it or with a small vertical line hanging from the right-hand end of the "-" (LaTeX \neg) or as A'. In the C programming language, it is !A and in digital circuit design, /A.
- logical positivism — a philosophical movement that stresses the function of philosophy as a method of criticizing and analyzing science and that rejects all transcendental metaphysics, statements of fact being held to be meaningful only if they have verifiable consequences in experience and in statements of logic, mathematics, or philosophy itself, and with such statements of fact deriving their validity from the rules of language.
- logical positivist — an exponent or follower of logical positivism
- logical shift left — logical shift
- logically possible — capable of being described without self-contradiction
- long-distance call — phone call: not local area
- looking-glass self — the self-image an individual forms by imagining what others think of his or her behavior and appearance.
- magnesium silicate — a white powder, 3MgSiO 3 ⋅5H 2 O, with variable hydration, insoluble in water or alcohol, used as a rubber filler, a bleaching agent, an odor absorbent, and in the manufacture of paints and resins.
- magnetic amplifier — an amplifier that applies the input signal to a primary winding and feeds an alternating current to a secondary winding where this current is modulated by the variations in the primary winding.
- magnetic potential — a scalar quantity, analogous to the electric potential, defined at each point in a given magnetic field to be equal to the work done in bringing a unit north pole from infinity to the point.
- magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
- magnetoelectricity — electricity developed by the action of magnets.
- magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
- malicious wounding — the intentional violent wounding or injuring of someone
- malignant melanoma — skin cancer
- malpighian tubules — one of a group of long, slender excretory tubules at the anterior end of the hindgut in insects and other terrestrial arthropods.
- margaret of valois — ("Queen Margot") 1533–1615, 1st wife of Henry IV of France: queen of Navarre; patron of science and literature (daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici).
- marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.