18-letter words containing a, s, h, o
- leave sth too late — If you leave something too late, you delay doing it so that when you eventually do it, it is useless or ineffective.
- lesser whitethroat — an Old World warbler, Sylvia curruca, having a greyish-brown plumage with a white throat and underparts
- like a house afire — a building in which people live; residence for human beings.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
- liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
- literae humaniores — (at Oxford University) the faculty concerned with Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and philosophy; classics
- lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- logarithmus dualis — (mathematics) (ld) Latin for logarithm base two. More commonly written as "log" with a subscript "2". Roughly the number of bits required to represent an integer.
- logical shift left — logical shift
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- louisiana purchase — a treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
- lubber grasshopper — plains grasshopper.
- magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
- make a meal of sth — If you think someone is taking more time and energy to do something than is necessary, you can say that they are making a meal of it.
- make short work of — exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
- make sth one's own — If you make something your own, you become involved in it in such a way that people think of it as being related only to you or belonging only to you, rather than to anyone else.
- malicious mischief — willful destruction of personal property motivated by ill will or resentment toward its owner or possessor.
- maternity hospital — birthing facility
- median lethal dose — the quantity of a lethal substance, as a poison or pathogen, or of ionizing radiation that will kill 50 percent of the organisms subjected to it in a specified time period. Symbol: LD 5 0.
- menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
- metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
- microsoft exchange — (messaging) Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.
- minister of health — a person appointed to head the government department of health
- moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
- mohammed ibn-kasim — flourished early 8th century a.d, Muslim conqueror of the Sind region in India.
- monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
- monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
- moscow art theater — a Russian theatrical company founded in 1898 principally by Konstantin Stanislavski and famous for its naturalistic acting.
- mount saint helens — a city in Merseyside, in NW England, near Liverpool.
- move the goalposts — to change the aims of an activity to ensure the desired results
- movers and shakers — a person or thing that moves.
- much of a muchness — very similar
- mucopolysaccharide — (formerly) glycosaminoglycan.
- muscular dystrophy — a hereditary disease characterized by gradual wasting of the muscles with replacement by scar tissue and fat, sometimes also affecting the heart.
- natural philosophy — natural science.
- nebular hypothesis — the theory that the solar system evolved from a mass of nebular matter: prominent in the 19th century following its precise formulation by Laplace.
- negative cash flow — the situation when income is less than payments
- neo-pythagoreanism — a philosophical system, established in Alexandria and Rome in the second century b.c., consisting mainly of revived Pythagorean doctrines with elements of Platonism and Stoicism.
- nervous exhaustion — extreme mental and physical fatigue caused by excessive emotional stress; neurasthenia.
- neurophysiological — the branch of physiology dealing with the functions of the nervous system.
- neuropsychodynamic — Of or pertaining to neuropsychodynamics.
- neuropsychological — Of or pertaining to neuropsychology, the relation or combination of brain and mind.
- nightmare scenario — If you describe a situation or event as a nightmare scenario, you mean that it is the worst possible thing that could happen.
- nike of samothrace — a Greek marble statue (c200 b.c.) of Nike found at Samothrace and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- non-characteristic — Also, characteristical. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.
- north saskatchewan — a river in S central Canada, flowing E from the Rocky Mountains and joining the South Saskatchewan River to form the Saskatchewan River. 760 miles (1223 km) long.
- north truchas peak — a mountain in N New Mexico, near Santa Fe: one of the three Truchas Peaks. 13,110 feet (3999 meters).
- northeast by north — a point on the compass 11°15′ north of northeast. Abbreviation: NEbN.