16-letter words containing a, n, r
- haptic interface — (interface, hardware) A touch interface to a computer that provides feedback, such as a data glove.
- hard rock mining — (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining (hard-rock mining) and geology (hard-rock geology)
- hard times token — any of a series of U.S. copper tokens, issued 1834–41, bearing a political inscription or advertising message and serving as currency during coin shortages.
- hard-packed snow — snow which becomes very firmly packed as it becomes refrozen due to cold weather conditions rather than melting
- hare's-foot fern — a fern, Polypodium aureum, of tropical America, having a brown, scaly rootstock and green or deep bluish-green fronds.
- harleian library — a large library of manuscripts collected by the British statesman Robert Harley and his son and now housed in the British Museum.
- harvey firestone — Harvey Samuel, 1868–1938, U.S. industrialist and rubber manufacturer.
- has the x nature — (From Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?") Common hacker construction for "is an X", used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded in it truly has the loser nature!" See also the X that can be Y is not the true X.
- have been around — be experienced
- have no time for — not tolerate
- have the drop on — a small quantity of liquid that falls or is produced in a more or less spherical mass; a liquid globule.
- haversian system — a Haversian canal and the series of concentric bony plates surrounding it.
- hawaiian gardens — a town in SW California.
- hawthorne effect — a positive change in the performance of a group of persons taking part in an experiment or study due to their perception of being singled out for special consideration.
- hay-scented fern — a fern, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, of eastern North America, having brittle, yellow-green fronds.
- head arrangement — a roughly outlined musical arrangement that is played from memory and is often learned by ear.
- head normal form — (theory, reduction) (HNF) A term describing a lambda expression whose top level is either a variable, a data value, a built-in function applied to too few arguments, or a lambda abstraction whose body is not reducible. I.e. the top level is neither a redex nor a lambda abstraction with a reducible body. An expression in HNF may contain redexes in argument postions whereas a normal form may not. Compare Weak Head Normal Form.
- headed notepaper — notepaper headed with the name and address of a person or organization
- headhunting firm — a recruiting agency
- health inspector — a public employee who inspects places such as restaurants, shops, factories etc to make sure they are hygienic and do not pose any dangers to health
- health insurance — insurance that compensates the insured for expenses or loss incurred for medical reasons, as through illness or hospitalization.
- hearing-impaired — having reduced or deficient hearing ability; hard-of-hearing: special programs for hearing-impaired persons.
- hearsay evidence — testimony based on what a witness has heard from another person rather than on direct personal knowledge or experience.
- heart transplant — surgery to replace a patient's heart
- heat of reaction — the heat evolved or absorbed when one mole of a product is formed at constant pressure
- heat prostration — heat exhaustion.
- heating engineer — a person whose job is to install and maintain equipment used for heating buildings
- heavier-than-air — (of an aircraft) weighing more than the air that it displaces, hence having to obtain lift by aerodynamic means.
- hebbian learning — (artificial intelligence) The most common way to train a neural network; a kind of unsupervised learning; named after canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O. Hebb. The algorithm is based on Hebb's Postulate, which states that where one cell's firing repeatedly contributes to the firing of another cell, the magnitude of this contribution will tend to increase gradually with time. This means that what may start as little more than a coincidental relationship between the firing of two nearby neurons becomes strongly causal. Despite limitations with Hebbian learning, e.g., the inability to learn certain patterns, variations such as Signal Hebbian Learning and Differential Hebbian Learning are still used.
- hematocrystallin — (biology, archaic) hemoglobin.
- hemopneumothorax — (medicine) pneumothorax and hemothorax occurring together.
- hepatopancreases — Plural form of hepatopancreas.
- here we go again — You use expressions such as 'here we go' and 'here we go again' in order to indicate that something is happening again in the way that you expected, especially something unpleasant.
- herman hollerith — (person) The promulgator of the punched card. Hollerith was born on 1860-02-29 and died on 1929-11-17. He graduated from Columbia University, NewYork, NY, USA. He joined the US Census Bureau as a statistician where he used a punched card device to help analyse the 1880 US census data. This punched card system stored data in 80 columns. This "80-column" concept has carried forward in various forms into modern applications. In 1896, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company to exploit his invention and in 1924 his firm became part of IBM. The Hollerith system was used for the 1911 UK census. A correspondant writes: Wasn't Hollerith's original machine first used for the 1990 US census? And I think I am right in saying that the physical layout was a 20x12 grid of round holes. The one I have seen (picture only, unfortunately, not the real thing) did not use 'columns' as such but holes were grouped into irregularly-shaped fields, such that each hole had a more-or-less independent function.
- hermitian matrix — Mathematics. a matrix, whose entries are complex numbers, equal to the transpose of the matrix whose entries are the conjugates of the entries of the given matrix.
- hernando de soto — Hernando [her-nan-doh;; Spanish er-nahn-daw] /hərˈnæn doʊ;; Spanish ɛrˈnɑn dɔ/ (Show IPA), or Fernando [fer-nan-doh;; Spanish fer-nahn-daw] /fərˈnæn doʊ;; Spanish fɛrˈnɑn dɔ/ (Show IPA), c1500–42, Spanish soldier and explorer in America.
- heroin addiction — addiction to the drug heroin
- herpes genitalis — genital herpes.
- herringbone gear — a helical gear having teeth that lie on the pitch cylinder in a V -shaped form so that one half of each tooth is on a right-handed helix and the other half on a left-handed helix.
- heteropalindrome — Something that spells something else when reversed, a semordnilap.
- hexachloroethane — a colorless crystalline compound, C 2 Cl 6 , with a camphorlike odor, soluble in alcohol and ether, insoluble in water: used in organic synthesis and pyrotechnics, as a retarding agent in fermentation, and as a solvent.
- hexahydroaniline — cyclohexylamine.
- hexahydrobenzene — cyclohexane.
- hierophantically — In a hierophantic manner; in the manner of a hierophant.
- high renaissance — a style of art developed in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, chiefly characterized by an emphasis on draftsmanship, schematized, often centralized compositions, and the illusion of sculptural volume in painting. Compare Early Renaissance, Venetian (def 2).
- high-performance — A high-performance car or other product goes very fast or does a lot.
- higher education — education beyond high school, specifically that provided by colleges and graduate schools, and professional schools.
- hispano-american — Spanish.
- historical novel — a novel within the genre of historical fiction.
- hit one's straps — to achieve one's full potential or become fully effective