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18-letter words containing a, s, t, o, r

  • italian corn salad — a southern European plant, Valerianella eriocarpa, of the valerian family, having edible, spoon-shaped, hairy leaves and dense clusters of pale-blue flowers.
  • jack of all trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
  • jack-of-all-trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
  • 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.
  • jose de san martin — José de [haw-se th e] /hɔˈsɛ ðɛ/ (Show IPA), 1778–1850, South American general and statesman, born in Argentina: leader in winning independence for Argentina, Peru, and Chile; protector of Peru 1821–22.
  • king's regulations — (in Britain and the Commonwealth when the sovereign is male) the code of conduct for members of the armed forces that deals with discipline, aspects of military law, etc
  • knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
  • known lazy bastard — (abuse)   (KLB) A term, used among technical support staff, for a user who repeatedly asks for help with problems whose solutions are clearly explained in the documentation, and persists in doing so after having been told to RTFM. KLBs are singled out for special treatment (i.e. ridicule), especially if they have been heard to say "It's so boring to read the manual! Why don't you just tell me?". The deepest pit in Hell is reserved for KLBs whose questions reveal total ignorance of the basic concepts (e.g., "How do I make a font in Excel?", "Where do I turn on my RAM?"), and who refuse to accept that their questions are neither simple nor well-formed.
  • lactose intolerant — cannot digest milk
  • lagrange's theorem — the theorem that the order of each subgroup of a finite group is a factor of the order of the group.
  • lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
  • last in, first out — The expression last in, first out is used to say that the last person who started work in an organization should be the first person to leave it, if fewer people are needed.
  • last-in, first-out — an inventory plan based on the assumption that materials constituting manufacturing costs should be carried on the books at the market price of the last lot received. Abbreviation: LIFO. Compare first-in, first-out.
  • law of segregation — the principle, originated by Gregor Mendel, stating that during the production of gametes the two copies of each hereditary factor segregate so that offspring acquire one factor from each parent.
  • lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
  • lesser whitethroat — an Old World warbler, Sylvia curruca, having a greyish-brown plumage with a white throat and underparts
  • 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.
  • lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
  • long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
  • loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
  • low-start mortgage — a mortgage in which interest only is repaid for a fixed period at the outset, to make it more affordable
  • lowell observatory — the astronomical observatory, situated in Flagstaff, Arizona, at which Pluto was discovered in 1930.
  • macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
  • 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".
  • magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.
  • magistrates' court — law: handles minor crimes
  • magnetic resonance — the response by atoms, molecules, or nuclei subjected to a magnetic field to radio waves or other forms of energy: used in medicine for scanning
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
  • make matters worse — If you say that something makes matters worse, you mean that it makes a difficult situation even more difficult.
  • make short work of — exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
  • make someone tired — to annoy or vex someone
  • manufactured goods — products made by machine
  • margaret of valois — ("Queen Margot") 1533–1615, 1st wife of Henry IV of France: queen of Navarre; patron of science and literature (daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici).
  • maritime provinces — region in Canada
  • master boot record — (operating system, storage)   A special area on a computer's main hard disk that gives the location of the disk's boot block or bootable partition where the operating system is installed.
  • maternity hospital — birthing facility
  • mato grosso do sul — a state of W central Brazil: formed in 1979 from part of Mato Grosso state. Capital: Campo Grande. Pop: 2 140 624 (2002). Area: 350 548 sq km (135 318 sq miles)
  • means of transport — vehicle or system of travel
  • membrane transport — the process by which physiologically important substances, such as calcium ions, sugars, etc, are conveyed across a biological membrane
  • mental reservation — an unexpressed doubt or qualification about a situation, person, etc.
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
  • metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
  • metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
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