16-letter words containing a, l, u
- labour relations — Labour relations refers to the relationship between employers and employees in industry, and the political decisions and laws that affect it.
- labour-intensive — Labour-intensive industries or methods of making things involve a lot of workers. Compare capital-intensive.
- labrador current — a cold ocean current flowing southwards off the coast of Labrador and meeting the warm Gulf Stream, causing dense fogs off the coast of Newfoundland
- ladies auxiliary — an association whose members are usually the wives of members of an association with which it is affiliated.
- lady of pleasure — a prostitute.
- lake havasu city — a city in W central Arizona.
- lambada-calculus — (humour, logic) (A pun on "lambda-calculus") Teaching logic thru spanish dance steps. Invented by P. van der Linden <[email protected]>.
- language barrier — difficulty in communication due to language difference
- language isolate — isolate (def 9).
- laplace equation — the second-order partial differential equation indicating that the Laplace operator operating on a given function results in zero. Compare harmonic (def 4c).
- lapsang souchong — a large-leafed variety of China tea with a slightly smoky flavour
- latent ambiguity — uncertainty that arises when a seemingly clear written instrument is matched against an extrinsic fact, as when a description of something being sold fits two different items.
- latissimus dorsi — a broad, flat muscle on each side of the midback, the action of which draws the arm backward and downward and rotates the front of the arm toward the body.
- lauderdale lakes — a city in SE Florida: suburb of Fort Lauderdale.
- laughing jackass — kookaburra.
- laurel and hardy — a team of US film comedians, Stan Laurel, 1890–1965, born in Britain, the thin one, and his partner, Oliver Hardy, 1892–1957, the fat one
- laurentides park — a national park in SE Canada, in Quebec province between the St. Lawrence and Lake St. John.
- leading question — a question so worded as to suggest the proper or desired answer.
- leaf-cutting ant — any of several tropical American ants of the genus Atta that cut and chew bits of leaves and flowers into a mash that they use to cultivate a fungus garden.
- leaf-cutting bee — any of the bees of the family Megachilidae that cut circular pieces from leaves or flowers to line their nests.
- league champions — the team that has come top of the league
- lean-burn engine — an engine designed to use a lean mixture of fuel and air in order to reduce petrol consumption and exhaust emissions
- leaps and bounds — You can use in leaps and bounds or by leaps and bounds to emphasize that someone or something is improving or increasing quickly and greatly.
- lenticular cloud — a very smooth, round or oval, lens-shaped cloud that is often seen, singly or stacked in groups, near a mountain ridge.
- lesbian cymatium — cyma reversa.
- letter of marque — license or commission granted by a state to a private citizen to capture and confiscate the merchant ships of another nation.
- leveraged buyout — the purchase of a company with borrowed money, using the company's assets as collateral, and often discharging the debt and realizing a profit by liquidating the company. Abbreviation: LBO.
- liberal unionist — a Liberal who opposed Gladstone's policy of Irish Home Rule in 1886 and after
- library pictures — a caption used to alert viewers that footage being broadcast is from an earlier time and is not happening now
- lignin sulfonate — a brown powder consisting of a sulfonate salt made from waste liquor of the sulfate pulping process of soft wood: used in concrete, leather tanning, as an additive in oil-well drilling mud, and as a source of vanillin.
- like gangbusters — a law-enforcement officer who specializes in breaking up organized crime, often by forceful or sensational means.
- line of latitude — an imaginary line on a globe, map, etc, indicating latitude
- linguistic atlas — dialect atlas.
- lissajous figure — the series of plane curves traced by an object executing two mutually perpendicular harmonic motions.
- lithium stearate — a white, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, LiC 18 H 35 O 2 , used chiefly in cosmetics, in plastics, and as a lubricant in powder metallurgy.
- liturgical drama — medieval drama, based on incidents in the Bible and performed in churches on holy days, usually in Latin and often chanted.
- liturgical latin — the Latin characteristic of the liturgies of the Western Church.
- lizard peninsula — a promontory in SW England, in SW Cornwall: the southernmost point in Great Britain
- lleu llaw gyffes — the son of Gwydion and Arianhrod, provided with a name, weapons, and a wife through the magic and trickery of Gwydion in spite of the curses of Arianhrod.
- logical unit 6.2 — (networking) (LU6.2) A type of logical unit that governs peer-to-peer SNA communications. LU6.2 supports general communication between programs in a distributed processing environment. LU6.2 is characterised by a peer relationship between session partners, efficient use of a session for multiple transactions, comprehensive end-to-end error processing and a generic application program interface consisting of structured verbs that are mapped into a product inplementation. LU6.2 is used by IBM's TPF operating system.
- loire-atlantique — a department in NW France. 2695 sq. mi. (6980 sq. km). Capital: Nantes.
- look up and down — to search everywhere
- lookout mountain — a mountain ridge in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama: a battle of the Civil War fought here, near Chattanooga, Tenn. 1863; highest point, 2126 feet (648 meters).
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lourenco marques — former name of Maputo.
- lucas van leyden — (Lucas Hugensz) 1494–1533, Dutch painter and engraver.
- luck of the draw — the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities: With my luck I'll probably get pneumonia.
- lumberjack shirt — a thick checked shirt, as worn by lumberjacks
- luminosity class — a classification of stars of a given spectral type according to their luminosity, breaking them down into dwarfs, giants, and supergiants.
- lump sum payment — money: one-off payment