17-letter words containing a, l, n, g
- lady of the night — a tropical American shrub, Brunfelsia americana, of the nightshade family, having berrylike yellow fruit and fragrant white flowers.
- lady-of-the-night — a tropical American shrub, Brunfelsia americana, of the nightshade family, having berrylike yellow fruit and fragrant white flowers.
- lagging indicator — A lagging indicator is an economic indicator that changes following a change in the economy, such as unemployment.
- lago de nicaragua — Spanish name of Lake Nicaragua.
- lagrange's method — a procedure for finding maximum and minimum values of a function of several variables when the variables are restricted by additional conditions.
- lake winnipegosis — a lake in S Canada, in W Manitoba. Area: 5400 sq km (2086 sq miles)
- landscaped garden — a garden that has been artistically designed
- langerhans islets — islets of Langerhans
- langmuir isotherm — A Langmuir isotherm is a classical relationship between the concentrations of a solid and a fluid, used to describe a state of no change in the sorption process.
- language planning — the development of policies or programs designed to direct or change language use, as through the establishment of an official language, the standardization or modernization of a language, or the development or alteration of a writing system.
- language transfer — transfer (def 20).
- laryngopharyngeal — of, relating to, or involving the larynx and pharynx.
- law of the jungle — a system or mode of action in which the strongest survive, presumably as animals in nature or as human beings whose activity is not regulated by the laws or ethics of civilization.
- leading indicator — A leading indicator is an economic indicator that changes before a change in the economy, and that can be used to predict future economic or financial activity.
- league of nations — an international organization to promote world peace and cooperation that was created by the Treaty of Versailles (1919): dissolved April 1946.
- learned borrowing — a word or other linguistic form borrowed from a classical language into a modern language.
- learning-disabled — pertaining to or having a learning disability: a learning-disabled child.
- lebesgue integral — an integral obtained by application of the theory of measure and more general than the Riemann integral.
- legal proceedings — court case
- legendre equation — a differential equation of the form (1− x 2) d2y/dx2 − 2 xdy/dx + a (a + 1) y = 0, where a is an arbitrary constant.
- lifelong learning — the provision or use of both formal and informal learning opportunities throughout people's lives in order to foster the continuous development and improvement of the knowledge and skills needed for employment and personal fulfilment
- light dawns on sb — If light dawns on you, you begin to understand something after a period of not being able to understand it.
- light in the head — dizzy; giddy
- light machine gun — any air-cooled machine gun having a caliber not greater than 0.30 inches (7.6 mm).
- light mineral oil — a colorless, oily, almost tasteless, water-insoluble liquid, usually of either a standard light density (light mineral oil) or a standard heavy density (heavy mineral oil) consisting of mixtures of hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum by distillation: used chiefly as a lubricant, in the manufacture of cosmetics, and in medicine as a laxative.
- ligurian republic — the republic in NW Italy set up by Napoleon in 1797, incorporated into France in 1805, and united with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.
- line of scrimmage — an imaginary line parallel to the goal lines that passes from one sideline to the other through the point of the football closest to the goal line of each team.
- linear assignment — assignment problem
- linking consonant — a consonant inserted between two vowels in speech
- listings magazine — a magazine with lists of TV and radio schedules
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- litigation friend — a person acting on behalf of an infant or other person under legal disability
- livingstone daisy — a gardener's name for various species of Mesembryanthemum, esp M. criniflorum, grown as garden annuals (though several are perennial) for their brightly coloured showy flowers: family Aizoaceae
- logic programming — (artificial intelligence, programming, language) A declarative, relational style of programming based on first-order logic. The original logic programming language was Prolog. The concept is based on Horn clauses. The programmer writes a "database" of "facts", e.g. wet(water). ("water is wet") and "rules", e.g. mortal(X) :- human(X). ("X is mortal is implied by X is human"). Facts and rules are collectively known as "clauses". The user supplies a "goal" which the system attempts to prove using "resolution" or "backward chaining". This involves matching the current goal against each fact or the left hand side of each rule using "unification". If the goal matches a fact, the goal succeeds; if it matches a rule then the process recurses, taking each sub-goal on the right hand side of the rule as the current goal. If all sub-goals succeed then the rule succeeds. Each time a possible clause is chosen, a "choice point" is created on a stack. If subsequent resolution fails then control eventually returns to the choice point and subsequent clauses are tried. This is known as "backtracking". Clauses may contain logic variables which take on any value necessary to make the fact or the left hand side of the rule match a goal. Unification binds these variables to the corresponding subterms of the goal. Such bindings are associated with the choice point at which the clause was chosen and are undone when backtracking reaches that choice point. The user is informed of the success or failure of his first goal and if it succeeds and contains variables he is told what values of those variables caused it to succeed. He can then ask for alternative solutions.
- logical operation — Boolean operation.
- long island sound — an arm of the Atlantic between Connecticut and Long Island. 90 miles (145 km) long.
- longitudinal wave — a wave in which the direction of displacement is the same as the direction of propagation, as a sound wave.
- lose the exchange — to lose a rook in return for a bishop or knight
- louisiana tanager — western tanager.
- low-hanging fruit — the fruit that grows low on a tree and is therefore easy to reach
- luggage insurance — insurance against the loss of luggage while travelling
- lymphangiographic — Relating to lymphangiography.
- lyon king of arms — the chief herald of Scotland
- macdonnell ranges — a mountain system of central Australia, in S central Northern Territory, extending about 160 km (100 miles) east and west of Alice Springs. Highest peak: Mount Zeil, 1531 m (5024 ft)
- macro-linguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- magellan barberry — an evergreen shrub, Berberis buxifolia, of southern Chile, having prickle-tipped leaves, dark-purple fruit, and orange-yellow flowers, rarely flowering in cultivation.
- magellanic clouds — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- magnesium sulfate — a white, water-soluble salt, MgSO 4 , used chiefly in medicine and in the processing of leather and textiles.
- magnetic monopole — a hypothetical very heavy particle with an isolated magnetic north pole or magnetic south pole.
- magnetoelasticity — the phenomenon, consisting of a change in magnetic properties, exhibited by a ferromagnetic material to which stress is applied.