18-letter words containing a, s, h, t
- hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
- immunohistological — the microscopic study of tissues with the aid of antibodies that bind to tissue components and reveal their presence.
- in another's shoes — in another's position
- in company with sb — If you feel, believe, or know something in company with someone else, you both feel, believe, or know it.
- in comparison with — when compared to
- in that/which case — You say in that case or in which case to indicate that what you are going to say is true if the possible situation that has just been mentioned actually exists.
- in the face of sth — If you take a particular action or attitude in the face of a problem or difficulty, you respond to that problem or difficulty in that way.
- in the first place — firstly
- in the last resort — You use in the last resort when stating the most basic or important fact that will still be true in a situation whatever else happens.
- in the name of sth — If you do something in the name of an ideal or an abstract thing, you do it in order to preserve or promote that thing.
- in the same breath — the air inhaled and exhaled in respiration.
- in with a shout of — If you say that someone is in with a shout of achieving or winning something, you mean that they have a chance of achieving or winning it.
- incidental charges — Incidental charges are costs of items and services that are not part of the main bill.
- industrial hygiene — the science that assesses, controls, and prevents occupational factors or sources of stress in the workplace that may significantly affect the health and well-being of employees or of the community in general
- industrial vehicle — a vehicle designed for use in industry
- inner automorphism — an automorphism that maps an element x into an element of the form axa −1 where a −1 is the inverse of a.
- inter-relationship — reciprocal relation.
- interrelationships — Plural form of interrelationship.
- iron (ii) sulphate — an iron salt with a saline taste, usually obtained as greenish crystals of the heptahydrate, which are converted to the white monohydrate above 100°C: used in inks, tanning, water purification, and in the treatment of anaemia. Formula: FeSO4
- isolation hospital — a hospital used to isolate or quarantine people with a contagious disease
- isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
- james-lange theory — a theory that emotions are caused by bodily sensations; for example, we are sad because we weep
- japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
- johannes gutenberg — Johannes [yoh-hahn-uh s] /yoʊˈhɑn əs/ (Show IPA), (Johann Gensfleisch) c1400–68, German printer: credited with invention of printing from movable type.
- kansas gay-feather — prairie button snakeroot.
- king of the castle — most powerful figure
- king-of-the-salmon — a ribbonfish, Trachypterus altivelis, of northern parts of the Pacific Ocean.
- kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
- knights of pythias — a fraternal order founded in Washington, D.C., in 1864.
- lagrange's theorem — the theorem that the order of each subgroup of a finite group is a factor of the order of the group.
- last chance saloon — a place frequented by unsavoury or contemptible people
- 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.
- legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
- lesser whitethroat — an Old World warbler, Sylvia curruca, having a greyish-brown plumage with a white throat and underparts
- light displacement — the weight of a ship with all its permanent equipment, excluding the weight of cargo, persons, ballast, dunnage, and fuel, but usually including the weight of permanent ballast and water used to operate steam machinery.
- lightning arrester — a device for preventing damage to radio, telephonic, or other electric equipment from lightning or other high-voltage currents, using spark gaps to carry the current to the ground without passing through the device.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- 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
- 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.
- malpighian tubules — one of a group of long, slender excretory tubules at the anterior end of the hindgut in insects and other terrestrial arthropods.
- manchester terrier — one of a breed of slender terriers having a short, glossy, black-and-tan coat, raised originally in Manchester, England.