18-letter words containing c, r, i, t, h, o
- hemorrhoidectomies — Plural form of hemorrhoidectomy.
- herringbone stitch — a type of cross-stitch in embroidery similar to the catch stitch in sewing, consisting of an overlapped V -shaped stitch that when worked in a continuous pattern produces a twill-weave effect.
- heteroscedasticity — (statistics) The property of a series of random variables of 'not' every variable having the same finite variance.
- heteroskedasticity — Alternative spelling of heteroscedasticity.
- hippocratic facies — the sallow facial expression, with listless staring eyes, often regarded as denoting approaching death
- histomorphological — histology.
- historical fiction — the genre of literature, film, etc., comprising narratives that take place in the past and are characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.
- historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
- historical present — the present tense used in narrating a past event as if happening at the time of narration.
- hot-water cylinder — a vertical cylindrical tank for storing hot water, esp an insulated one made of copper used in a domestic hot-water system
- hotel receptionist — a person who looks after guests when they first arrive at a hotel, checking them in, giving them their keys, etc
- hydroxyacetic acid — glycolic acid.
- hyper-metaphorical — a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”. Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def 1).
- hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
- hyperconcentration — the act of concentrating; the state of being concentrated.
- hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
- hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
- 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.
- in accordance with — conforming to
- in comparison with — when compared to
- indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
- ionization chamber — a device for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation, consisting of a tube containing a low pressure gas and two electrodes between which a high voltage is maintained. The current between the electrodes is a function of the intensity of the radiation
- isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
- isthmus of corinth — a narrow strip of land between the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf: crossed by the Corinth Canal making navigation possible between the gulfs
- japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
- jewel in the crown — the most valuable, esteemed, or successful person or thing of a number
- john birch society — an ultraconservative organization, founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, Jr., chiefly to combat alleged Communist activities in the U.S.
- 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)
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- mathematical error — a mistake in a mathematical calculation, etc
- menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
- merchant of venice — a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.
- metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
- 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.
- 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).
- morphine addiction — the fact or condition of being addicted to morphine
- 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.