17-letter words containing a, p, l, i, n
- japanese clematis — a Japanese woody vine, Clematis paniculata, of the buttercup family, having dense clusters of fragrant, white flowers and plumed fruit.
- japanese slippers — (in Malaysia) casual sandals; flip-flops
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- jurisprudentially — In terms of jurisprudence.
- karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
- karitane hospital — a hospital for young babies and their mothers
- 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
- kidney transplant — surgery to replace a kidney
- kinetic potential — the kinetic energy minus the potential energy in a system obeying the principle of conservation of energy. Symbol: L.
- king philip's war — the war (1675–76) between New England colonists and a confederation of Indians under their leader, King Philip.
- kitchen appliance — a machine intended for use in the kitchen, such as a fridge or a food processor
- lake winnipegosis — a lake in S Canada, in W Manitoba. Area: 5400 sq km (2086 sq miles)
- lambda expression — (mathematics) A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
- landscape painter — artist who depicts natural scenery
- language planning — the development of policies or programs designed to direct or change language use, as through the establishment of an official language, the standardization or modernization of a language, or the development or alteration of a writing system.
- larmor precession — the precession of charged particles, as electrons, placed in a magnetic field, the frequency of the precession (Larmor frequency) being equal to the electronic charge times the strength of the magnetic field divided by 4π times the mass.
- least fixed point — (mathematics) A function f may have many fixed points (x such that f x = x). For example, any value is a fixed point of the identity function, (\ x . x). If f is recursive, we can represent it as f = fix F where F is some higher-order function and fix F = F (fix F). The standard denotational semantics of f is then given by the least fixed point of F. This is the least upper bound of the infinite sequence (the ascending Kleene chain) obtained by repeatedly applying F to the totally undefined value, bottom. I.e. fix F = LUB {bottom, F bottom, F (F bottom), ...}. The least fixed point is guaranteed to exist for a continuous function over a cpo.
- legal proceedings — court case
- leizhou peninsula — a peninsula of SE China, in SW Guangdong province, separated from Hainan Island by Hainan Strait
- lempert operation — fenestration (def 3c).
- 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.
- lincoln's sparrow — a North American sparrow, Melospiza lincolnii, having a buff breast with black streaks.
- linear dependence — (in linear algebra) the property of a set of elements in a vector space in which at least one of the vectors in the set can be written as a linear combination of the others.
- liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
- lisp machine lisp — (language) An extension of Maclisp, now called Zetalisp.
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- load displacement — the weight, in long tons, of a cargo vessel loaded so that the summer load line touches the surface of the water.
- 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.
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- lymphadenopathies — Plural form of lymphadenopathy.
- lymphangiographic — Relating to lymphangiography.
- magnetic monopole — a hypothetical very heavy particle with an isolated magnetic north pole or magnetic south pole.
- make no apologies — If you say that you make no apologies for what you have done, you are emphasizing that you feel that you have done nothing wrong.
- malayo-polynesian — a family of languages extending from Madagascar to the central Pacific, including Malagasy, Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Polynesian
- manpower planning — a procedure used in organizations to balance future requirements for all levels of employee with the availability of such employees
- manual typewriter — a keyboard machine, operated entirely by hand, for writing mechanically in characters resembling print
- maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
- mean proportional — (between two numbers a and b) a number x for which a/x = x/b : The number 3 is a mean proportional between 1 and 9.
- mechanical pencil — a pencil for holding lead that can be extended by mechanical means.
- meissen porcelain — Dresden china.
- melissopalynology — The study of honey and its composition.
- mental impairment — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind, which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct
- mentally impaired — with reduced or weakened mental capacity
- metalloproteinase — (enzyme) Any of several proteinases that have a metal atom (often zinc) at their active centre.
- microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
- micromanipulation — the technique of performing mechanical operations under high magnification through the use of specialized tools.
- micromanipulators — Plural form of micromanipulator.
- micropaleontology — the branch of paleontology dealing with the study of microscopic fossils.
- midsagittal plane — a plane passing through the nasion when the skull is oriented in the Frankfurt horizontal.