16-letter words containing c, a, i, n
- learning process — a process of learning
- legal dictionary — a specialized dictionary covering terms used in the various branches of the legal profession, as civil law, criminal law, and corporate law. A comprehensive legal dictionary adds to its body of standard English entries many words and phrases that have made their way into modern legal practice from law French and Latin and are rarely found in a general English monolingual dictionary. Such a specialized dictionary is useful not only for law students and for attorneys themselves, but for members of the lay public who require legal services. Legal dictionaries published in print follow the normal practice of sorting entry terms alphabetically, while electronic dictionaries, such as the online Dictionary of Law on Dictionary.com, allow direct, immediate access to a search term.
- lenticular cloud — a very smooth, round or oval, lens-shaped cloud that is often seen, singly or stacked in groups, near a mountain ridge.
- lesbian cymatium — cyma reversa.
- lesser celandine — a Eurasian plant, Ranunculus ficaria, of the buttercup family, having heart-shaped leaves and glossy yellow flowers, naturalized in North America.
- lethal injection — dose of deadly chemical into a vein
- lexical analyser — (language) (Or "scanner") The initial input stage of a language processor (e.g. a compiler), the part that performs lexical analysis.
- lexical analysis — (programming) (Or "linear analysis", "scanning") The first stage of processing a language. The stream of characters making up the source program or other input is read one at a time and grouped into lexemes (or "tokens") - word-like pieces such as keywords, identifiers, literals and punctuation. The lexemes are then passed to the parser.
- liang ch'i-ch'ao — 1873–1929, Chinese scholar, journalist, and reformer.
- like cat and dog — quarrelling savagely
- limited monarchy — a monarchy that is limited by laws and a constitution.
- limited-monarchy — a limited train, bus, etc.
- linguistic atlas — dialect atlas.
- lipstick lesbian — a lesbian who is feminine in manner or appearance; a femme.
- little black ant — a widely distributed ant, Monomorium minimum, sometimes a household pest.
- liturgical latin — the Latin characteristic of the liturgies of the Western Church.
- logical constant — one of the connectives of a given system of formal logic, esp those of the sentential calculus, not, and, or, and if … then …
- logical relation — A relation R satisfying f R g <=> For all a, b, a R b => f a R g b This definition, by Plotkin, can be used to extend the definition of a relation on the types of a and b to a relation on functions.
- logical unit 6.2 — (networking) (LU6.2) A type of logical unit that governs peer-to-peer SNA communications. LU6.2 supports general communication between programs in a distributed processing environment. LU6.2 is characterised by a peer relationship between session partners, efficient use of a session for multiple transactions, comprehensive end-to-end error processing and a generic application program interface consisting of structured verbs that are mapped into a product inplementation. LU6.2 is used by IBM's TPF operating system.
- long-tail claims — Long-tail claims are claims that are made or settled a long time after the insurance policy has expired.
- loop combination — A program transformation where the bodies of two loops are merged into one thus reducing the overhead of manipulating and testing the control variable and branching. Further optimisation of the merged code may then become possible. In horizontal loop combination the bodies of the loops are largely independent so only the loop overhead is saved. Vertical loop combination applies where the results of the first loop are used by the second. Combining the two allows the intermediate results to be used immediately (in registers) rather than requiring them to be stored in an array. The functional equivalent of horizontal and vertical loop combination are tupling and fusion.
- lord chamberlain — (in Britain) the chief official of the royal household
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lower california — Baja California.
- luminosity class — a classification of stars of a given spectral type according to their luminosity, breaking them down into dwarfs, giants, and supergiants.
- lymphangiectasia — (medicine) dilation of the lymphatic vessels.
- lymphangiectasis — Alt form lymphangiectasia.
- mach's principle — the proposition that there is no absolute space and that the inertia and acceleration of a body are determined by all of the matter of the universe.
- machiavellianism — of, like, or befitting Machiavelli.
- machine language — machine code
- machine learning — The ability of a machine to improve its performance based on previous results.
- machine moulding — the process of making moulds and cores for castings by mechanical means, usually by compacting the moulding sand by vibration instead of by ramming down
- machine operator — someone who operates mechanical equipment
- machine readable — of or relating to data encoded on an appropriate medium and in a form suitable for processing by computer.
- machine washable — suitable for washing in a washing machine
- machine-readable — of or relating to data encoded on an appropriate medium and in a form suitable for processing by computer.
- machinist's mate — a petty officer trained to operate, repair, etc. ships' engines
- mackinaw blanket — a thick woolen blanket, often woven with bars of color, formerly used in the northern and western U.S. by Indians, loggers, etc.
- maclaurin series — a Taylor series in which the reference point is zero.
- macro-linguistic — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macroenvironment — (biology) The large-scale and long-term environment and conditions that affect an organism.
- macroinstruction — macro (def 5).
- macrolinguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macrorestriction — In physical gene mapping, the digestion of DNA of high molecular weight with a restriction enzyme having a low number of restriction sites.
- magazine section — a magazinelike section in the Sunday editions of many newspapers, containing articles rather than news items and often letters, reviews, stories, puzzles, etc.
- magellanic cloud — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- magical thinking — a conviction that thinking is equivalent to doing, occurring in dreams, the thought patterns of children, and some types of mental disorders, especially obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- magmatic stoping — the process by which country rock is broken up and engulfed by the upward movement of magma
- magnesiochromite — (mineral) A chromite species with the formula MgCr2O4.
- magnetic anomaly — a departure from the normal magnetic field of the earth.