20-letter words containing a, l, t, e
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- lacto-ovo-vegetarian — Also called lactovarian [lak-tuh-vair-ee-uh n] /ˌlæk təˈvɛər i ən/ (Show IPA), ovolactarian, ovo-lacto-vegetarian. a vegetarian whose diet includes dairy products and eggs.
- lafayette escadrille — a contingent of American aviators who in 1916 served as volunteers (Escadrille Américaine) in the French air force and in 1918 became the 103rd Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army.
- language development — the development verbal communication skills in children
- last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
- laurentian mountains — a range of low mountains in E Canada, in Quebec between the St Lawrence River and Hudson Bay. Highest point: 1191 m (3905 ft)
- law of superposition — Geology. a basic law of geochronology, stating that in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.
- lead with one's chin — to act so imprudently as to invite disaster
- least-squares method — a method of estimating values from a set of observations by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences between the observations and the values to be found.
- leave sth until last — If you leave something or someone until last, you delay using, choosing, or dealing with them until you have used, chosen, or dealt with all the others.
- legal representation — representation by a lawyer
- legislative assembly — the legislature of France 1791–92.
- letters testamentary — a document issued by the probate court or some officer who has authority, directing the person named as executor in a will to act in that capacity
- lieutenant commander — a commissioned officer ranking next below a commander and next above a lieutenant.
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- lifetime achievement — the notable successes that someone achieves during their life
- light the touchpaper — to do something that will cause much anger or excitement
- like a dose of salts — very quickly indeed
- like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
- like death warmed up — very ill
- linage advertisement — advertisements which are costed and paid for according to the number of lines in them
- linear extrapolation — Statistics, Mathematics. extrapolation using a linear equation to estimate the value of a variable or function outside the tabulated or observed range.
- linearly ordered set — a set in which a relation, as “less than or equal to,” holds for all pairs of elements of the set.
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- linguistic universal — language universal.
- literate programming — (programming, text) Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
- little kanawha river — a river in NW West Virginia, flowing N and NW to the Ohio River. 160 miles (257 km) long.
- live and breathe sth — be passionately interested in sth
- llywelyn ap iorwerth — called Llywelyn the Great. died 1240, prince of Gwynedd, N Wales (1194–1238), who extended his rule over most of Wales
- lonely hearts column — the part of a newspaper or magazine where lonely hearts ads appear
- long island iced tea — a potent cocktail consisting of equal parts of, typically, five different distilled alcoholic liquors, usually vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and triple sec, with a small amount of mixer, usually cola
- longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- love's labour's lost — a comedy (1594–95?) by Shakespeare.
- lower layer protocol — (networking, protocol) (LLP, or lower-layer protocol) Any protocol residing in OSI layers one to four. These protocols package, route, verify and transmit datagrams. A prime example would be TCP/IP. Lower layer protocols support the upper layer protocols.
- lower yosemite falls — a section of Yosemite Falls in central California, in the Yosemite National Park, that is 98 m (320 ft) high
- lump in one's throat — the passage from the mouth to the stomach or to the lungs, including the pharynx, esophagus, larynx, and trachea.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magnetic inclination — to plunge (something, as a cloth or sponge) temporarily into a liquid, so as to moisten it, dye it, or cause it to take up some of the liquid: He dipped the brush into the paint bucket.
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
- mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- make head (n)or tail — If you say that you cannot make head nor tail of something or you cannot make head or tail of it, you are emphasizing that you cannot understand it at all.
- make head or tail of — to attempt to understand (a problem, etc)
- make love to someone — to have sexual intercourse with someone
- mannitol hexanitrate — a colorless, crystalline, water-insoluble, explosive solid, C 6 H 8 N 6 O 1 8 , used as a fulminating agent in percussion caps and in the treatment of hypertension and coronary insufficiency.
- mare tranquillitatis — (Sea of Tranquillity) a dark plain in the first quadrant of the face of the moon: about 110,000 sq. mi. (285,000 sq. km).