17-letter words containing a, n, g, l, i, c
- functional change — a change in the grammatical function of a word, as in the use of the noun input as a verb or the noun fun as an adjective.
- garlic mayonnaise — mayonnaise flavoured with garlic
- gause's principle — the principle that similar species cannot coexist for long in the same ecological niche
- genealogical tree — family tree.
- general discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has served honorably but who has not met all the conditions of an honorable discharge.
- general insurance — insurance (such as house insurance and car insurance) that does not insure someone's life
- general semantics — a philosophical approach to language, developed by Alfred Korzybski, exploring the relationship between the form of language and its use and attempting to improve the capacity to express ideas.
- genetic algorithm — (GA) An evolutionary algorithm which generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" or "genome". Chromosomes are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. "Crossover", the kind of recombination of chromosomes found in sexual reproduction in nature, is often also used in GAs. Here, an offspring's chromosome is created by joining segments choosen alternately from each of two parents' chromosomes which are of fixed length. GAs are useful for multidimensional optimisation problems in which the chromosome can encode the values for the different variables being optimised.
- gigaelectron volt — one billion electron-volts. Abbreviation: GeV, Gev.
- glastonbury chair — a folding chair having legs crossed front-to-back and having arms connected to the back and to the front seat rail.
- glycosaminoglycan — any of a class of polysaccharides derived from hexosamine that form mucins when complexed with proteins: formerly called mucopolysaccharide.
- graafian follicle — one of the small vesicles containing a developing ovum in the ovary of a mammal.
- grand climacteric — Physiology. a period of decrease of reproductive capacity in men and women, culminating, in women, in the menopause.
- grand union canal — a canal in S England linking London and the Midlands: opened in 1801
- greater celandine — celandine (def 1).
- greenwich village — a section of New York City, in lower Manhattan: inhabited and frequented by artists, writers, and students.
- guglielmo marconi — Guglielmo [goo-lyel-maw] /guˈlyɛl mɔ/ (Show IPA), Marchese, 1874–1937, Italian electrical engineer and inventor, especially in the field of wireless telegraphy: Nobel Prize in physics 1909.
- gunboat diplomacy — diplomatic relations involving the use or threat of military force, especially by a powerful nation against a weaker one.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- hyaline cartilage — the typical, translucent form of cartilage, containing little fibrous tissue.
- i will/can manage — You say 'I can manage' or 'I'll manage' as a way of refusing someone's offer of help and insisting on doing something by yourself.
- ignoratio elenchi — the fallacy of offering proof irrelevant to the proposition in question.
- inertial guidance — a guidance system for an aerospace vehicle, in which self-contained devices determine the vehicle's course on the basis of the directions and magnitudes of the accelerations it undergoes in flight.
- inspector general — a comedy (1836) by Gogol.
- inspector-general — a comedy (1836) by Gogol.
- integral calculus — the branch of mathematics that deals with integrals, especially the methods of ascertaining indefinite integrals and applying them to the solution of differential equations and the determining of areas, volumes, and lengths.
- integral function — an entire function.
- integrated school — (in New Zealand) a private or church school that has joined the state school system
- intellectualising — Give an intellectual character to.
- intellectualizing — Present participle of intellectualize.
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- kensington palace — a royal residence in Kensington Gardens, in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea; dating from the 17th century, it was improved and extended by Sir Cristopher Wren
- 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.
- 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.
- legal proceedings — court case
- light machine gun — any air-cooled machine gun having a caliber not greater than 0.30 inches (7.6 mm).
- 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.
- linking consonant — a consonant inserted between two vowels in speech
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- 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.
- luggage insurance — insurance against the loss of luggage while travelling
- lymphangiographic — Relating to lymphangiography.
- macro-linguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- magellanic clouds — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- 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.
- many-valued logic — the study of logical systems in which the truth-values that a proposition may have are not restricted to two, representing only truth and falsity