18-letter words containing c, h, i, r
- kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
- lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
- lake pontchartrain — a shallow lagoon in SE Louisiana, linked with the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow channel, the Rigolets: resort and fishing centre. Area: 1620 sq km (625 sq miles)
- launching ceremony — a ceremony that celebrates the launch of a ship for the first time into the water
- leave in the lurch — a situation at the close of various games in which the loser scores nothing or is far behind the opponent.
- legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
- lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
- limburger (cheese) — a semisoft cheese of whole milk, with a strong odor and flavor, made originally in Limburg, Belgium
- 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
- list comprehension — (functional programming) An expression in a functional language denoting the results of some operation on (selected) elements of one or more lists. An example in Haskell: This returns all pairs of numbers (x,y) where x and y are elements of the list 1, 2, ..., 10, y <= x and their sum is less than 10. A list comprehension is simply "syntactic sugar" for a combination of applications of the functions, concat, map and filter. For instance the above example could be written: The term "list comprehension" appears in the references below. The earliest reference to the notation is in Rod Burstall and John Darlington's description of their language, NPL. David Turner subsequently adopted this notation in his languages SASL, KRC and Miranda, where he has called them "ZF expressions", set abstractions and list abstractions (in his 1985 FPCA paper [Miranda: A Non-Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types]).
- lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- lord chief justice — the presiding judge of Britain's High Court of Justice, the superior court of record for both criminal and civil cases.
- loschmidt's number — the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure, equal to 2.687 × 10 19.
- 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.
- lower palaeolithic — the earliest of the three sections of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 3 million years ago and ending about 70 000 bc with the emergence of Neanderthal man
- 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".
- magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
- manchester terrier — one of a breed of slender terriers having a short, glossy, black-and-tan coat, raised originally in Manchester, England.
- manhattan district — (during World War II) the code name for a unit of US army engineers established in 1942 to construct secret sites for the development of the atomic bomb
- marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.
- marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
- mathematical error — a mistake in a mathematical calculation, etc
- mechanical drawing — drawing, as of machinery, done with the aid of rulers, scales, compasses, etc.
- menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
- merchant of venice — a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.
- mercurous chloride — calomel.
- mergui archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the Andaman Sea, off the Tenasserim coast of S Myanmar: mountainous and forested
- metacentric height — the distance between the center of gravity and the metacenter of a floating body, as of a vessel.
- metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
- methacrylate resin — an acrylic resin formed by polymerizing the esters or amides of methacrylic acid.
- methylene chloride — a colorless, volatile liquid, CH 2 Cl 2 , used chiefly as a solvent, as a refrigerant, and as a local anesthetic in dentistry.
- microsloth windows — (abuse, operating system) /mi:'kroh-sloth" win"dohz/ (Or "Windoze", /win'dohz/) A derogatory term for Microsoft Windows which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with mess-dos that it is agonisingly slow on anything less than a fast 486. Also called just "Windoze", with the implication that you can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the latter term is extremely common on Usenet. Compare X, sun-stools.
- 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.
- miniature pinscher — one of a German breed of toy dogs resembling a smaller version of the Doberman pinscher, having a flat skull, a smooth coat, erect ears, and a docked tail, bred originally as a watchdog.
- moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
- modular arithmetic — arithmetic in which numbers that are congruent modulo a given number are treated as the same. Compare congruence (def 2), modulo, modulus (def 2b).
- monochlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of three isomers of a chlorinated derivative of biphenyl containing one chlorine atom.
- monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
- morphine addiction — the fact or condition of being addicted to morphine
- mucopolysaccharide — (formerly) glycosaminoglycan.
- natural childbirth — childbirth involving little or no use of drugs or anesthesia and usually involving a program in which the mother is psychologically and physically prepared for the birth process.
- naval architecture — the science of designing ships and other waterborne craft.
- neighborhood watch — a neighborhood surveillance program or group in which residents keep watch over one another's houses, patrol the streets, etc., in an attempt to prevent crime.
- 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.
- neutrosophic logic — (logic) (Or "Smarandache logic") A generalisation of fuzzy logic based on Neutrosophy. A proposition is t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, and f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F, or the sum n=t+i+f. Neutrosophic logic thus generalises: - intuitionistic logic, which supports incomplete theories (for 0