19-letter words containing a, n, o, s
- knock someone bandy — to amaze or astound
- komandorski islands — a group of islands in the Bering Sea, in NE Russia, E of the Kamchatka Peninsula: U.S.-Japan naval battle, 1943.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- late-night shopping — later opening hours of shops than usual, esp as a regular occurrence on a particular night of the week
- lay down one's arms — to stop fighting; surrender
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- lead someone astray — If someone or something leads you astray, they make you believe something that is not true, causing you to make a wrong decision.
- league championship — the competition to become league champions
- lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- leave someone alone — to permit to stay or be alone
- legislative council — the upper house of a bicameral legislature.
- leisure occupations — activities which you enjoy and which you perform in your free time
- let one's hair down — any of the numerous fine, usually cylindrical, keratinous filaments growing from the skin of humans and animals; a pilus.
- let someone have it — to allow or permit: to let him escape.
- liaodong pensinsula — a peninsula of NE China, in S Manchuria extending south into the Yellow Sea: forms the S part of Liaoning province
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- lie in one's throat — to tell a foul or outrageous lie
- like a dog's dinner — dressed smartly or ostentatiously
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- logical consequence — the relation that obtains between the conclusion and the premises of a formally valid argument
- long-and-short work — an arrangement of rectangular quoins or jambstones set alternately vertically and horizontally.
- look sb up and down — If someone looks you up and down, they direct their eyes from your head to your feet, in a rude and superior way and often as though they disapprove of you.
- lose one's heart to — to fall in love with
- loss on translation — A loss on translation is the amount of money that is lost by a company by converting another currency used in a transaction into the functional currency of the company.
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- lumholtz's kangaroo — boongary.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- macaroni and cheese — pasta with cheese sauce
- machine instruction — (programming) The smallest element of a machine code program.
- machine translation — changing language of a text by computer
- magnesium carbonate — a white powder, MgCO 3 , insoluble in water and alcohol, soluble in acids, used in dentifrices and cosmetics, in medicine as an antacid, and as a refractory material.
- magnesium hydroxide — a white, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, Mg(OH) 2 , used chiefly in medicine as an antacid and as a laxative.
- main-topgallantmast — the mast next above the main-topmast.
- major seventh chord — a chord much used in modern music, esp jazz and pop, consisting of a major triad with an added major seventh above the root
- make no bones about — Anatomy, Zoology. one of the structures composing the skeleton of a vertebrate. the hard connective tissue forming the substance of the skeleton of most vertebrates, composed of a collagen-rich organic matrix impregnated with calcium, phosphate, and other minerals.
- make oneself scarce — insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant: Meat and butter were scarce during the war.
- malleable cast iron — white cast iron that has been malleablized.
- manchester autocode — (language, history) The predecessor of Mercury Autocode.
- manchester encoding — (communications, protocol) A method of transmitting bits which enables the receiver to easily synchronise with the sender. A simple way of signalling bits might be to transmit a high voltage for some period for a 1-bit and a low voltage for a 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High ___ Low |___ Time: -> . . . . . However, when several identical bits are sent in succession, this provides no information to the receiver about when each bit starts and stops. Manchester encoding splits each bit period into two, and ensures that there is always a transition between the signal levels in the middle of each bit. This allows the receiver to synchronise with the sender. In normal Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is transmitted with a high voltage in the first period, and a low voltage in the second, and vice verse for the 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High Low || |_| || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . In Differential Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal equal to the last half of the previous bit's signal and a 0-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal opposite to the last half of the previous bit's signal. That is, a zero bit is indicated by a transition at the beginning of the bit. Like normal Manchester encoding, there is always a transition in the middle of the transmission of the bit. Differential Manchester Encoding Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High __ Low |_| || || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . With each bit period half as long, twice as much bandwidth is required when using either of the Manchester encoding schemes.
- manual transmission — an automotive transmission in which the driver shifts gears manually.
- maraschino cherries — cherries in a syrup flavored with maraschino or, now usually, imitation maraschino
- market segmentation — the division of a market into identifiable groups, esp to improve the effectiveness of a marketing strategy
- mary wollstonecraft — Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) 1759–97, English author and feminist (mother of Mary Shelley).
- massive retaliation — a strategy of military counterattack that involves the use of nuclear weapons.
- master of foxhounds — the person responsible for the conduct of a fox hunt and to whom all members of the hunt and its staff are responsible. Abbreviation: M.F.H.
- matthias i corvinus — ?1440–90, king of Hungary (1458–90): built up the most powerful kingdom in Central Europe. A patron of Renaissance art, he founded the Corvina library, one of the finest in Europe
- maturation division — a stage in meiosis during which the chromosomal number of the reproductive cell is reduced to one chromosome from each original chromosome pair.
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- megabits per second — (unit) (Mbps, Mb/s) Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second (not 1,048,576). E.g. Ethernet can carry 10 Mbps.