17-letter words containing a, t, o, n
- heteronormativity — The view that all human beings are either male or female, both in sex and in gender, and that sexual and romantic thoughts and relations are normal only when between people of different sexes.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- hillel foundation — a national organization, founded in 1924 by the B'nai B'rith, that institutes and administers programs designed to enrich the religious, cultural, and social life of Jewish college students.
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- ho chi minh trail — a network of jungle paths winding from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam, used as a military route by North Vietnam to supply the Vietcong during the Vietnam War.
- hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
- hold sb to ransom — If you say that someone is holding you to ransom in British English, or holding you for ransom in American English, you mean that they are using their power to try to force you to do something which you do not want to do.
- holding operation — a plan or procedure devised to prolong the existing situation
- hole in the heart — a defect of the heart in which there is an abnormal opening in any of the walls dividing the four heart chambers
- hollerith, herman — Herman Hollerith
- homeland security — national defence
- homogentisic acid — an intermediate compound in the metabolism of tyrosine and of phenylalanine, found in excess in the blood and urine of persons affected with alkaptonuria.
- honorable mention — a citation conferred on a contestant, exhibit, etc., having exceptional merit though not winning a top honor or prize.
- hope against hope — the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best: to give up hope.
- horatio kitchener — Horatio Herbert (1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome) 1850–1916, English field marshal and statesman.
- hormone treatment — any of several medical treatments using hormones
- hospital gangrene — Pathology. a contagious, often fatal gangrene, especially involving amputation stumps and war wounds, occurring usually in crowded, ill-kept hospitals, and caused by putrefactive bacteria.
- hot-and-sour soup — a spicy Chinese soup made with pork, chicken, beans, vinegar, etc., served hot
- hottentot's bread — elephant's-foot.
- housekeeping cart — A housekeeping cart is a large metal basket on wheels which is used by a cleaner in a hotel to move clean bed linen, towels, and cleaning equipment.
- how the land lies — the prevailing conditions or state of affairs
- hubble's constant — the ratio of the recessional velocity of galaxies to their distance from the sun, with current measurements of its value ranging from 50 to 100 km/sec per megaparsec.
- hydrogasification — a high-temperature, high-pressure process for producing liquid or gaseous fuels from fine particles of coal and hydrogen gas
- hydrothermal vent — an opening on the floor of the sea from which hot, mineral-rich solutions issue. Compare vent1 (def 2).
- hydroxytryptamine — (organic compound) Any hydroxy derivative of tryptamine, but especially 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin).
- hyperalimentation — overfeeding.
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperchlorination — Chemistry. to combine or treat with chlorine. to introduce chlorine atoms into an organic compound by an addition or substitution reaction.
- hyperinflationary — (economics) Having very high levels of inflation.
- hyperpigmentation — coloration, especially of the skin.
- hyperpolarisation — Alternative spelling of hyperpolarization.
- hyperpolarization — The act or process of hyperpolarizing.
- hyposensitization — The state or process of being reduced in sensitivity especially to an allergen.
- i am bound to say — You can say 'I am bound to say' to introduce a statement expressing something that you find undesirable or unexpected.
- i wouldn't say no — You use 'I wouldn't say no' to indicate that you would like something, especially something that has just been offered to you.
- i'll thank you to — used ironically to intensify a command, request, etc
- ichthyosarcotoxin — a term applied to any poison found in the flesh of poisonous fishes.
- icing on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
- icositetrahedrons — Plural form of icositetrahedron.
- idiosyncratically — pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an individual: The best minds are idiosyncratic and unpredictable as they follow the course of scientific discovery.
- ignoratio elenchi — the fallacy of offering proof irrelevant to the proposition in question.
- illinois waterway — a waterway system in N Illinois made up of canals and rivers connecting Lake Michigan in Chicago with the Mississippi River. 336 miles (541 km) long.
- illocutionary act — an act performed by a speaker by virtue of uttering certain words, as for example the acts of promising or of threatening
- illusionistically — In an illusionistic manner.
- image recognition — (graphics, artificial intelligence) The identification of objects in an image. This process would probably start with image processing techniques such as noise removal, followed by (low-level) feature extraction to locate lines, regions and possibly areas with certain textures. The clever bit is to interpret collections of these shapes as single objects, e.g. cars on a road, boxes on a conveyor belt or cancerous cells on a microscope slide. One reason this is an AI problem is that an object can appear very different when viewed from different angles or under different lighting. Another problem is deciding what features belong to what object and which are background or shadows etc. The human visual system performs these tasks mostly unconsciously but a computer requires skillful programming and lots of processing power to approach human performance.
- imitation doublet — a doublet formed entirely of glass.
- immediate version — child version
- immigrant workers — people who work in a country they arrived to in order to settle there
- immunodiagnostics — the determination of immunologic characteristics of individuals, cells, and other biologic entities.
- immunosuppressant — (pharmacology) Capable of immunosuppression, immunosuppressive.