18-letter words containing d, i, l, a
- in-band signalling — (communications) (Or CAS, channel associated signaling) Transmission of control signals in the same channel as data. This is commonly used in the Public Switched Telephone Network where the same pair of wires carry both voice and control signals (e.g. dialling, ringing). Another example is the use on a computer serial line of Control-S and Control-Q characters for flow control as opposed to hardware flow control which would be out-of-band signalling. In digital communications, in-band signalling often uses "bit-robbing" where, for example, one bit in each frame is used for signalling instead of data. This is the reason why a D1 channel in the T-carrier system can only carry 56 Kbps of usable data instead of the 64 Kbps carried by the D0 channel in the E-carrier system.
- incidental charges — Incidental charges are costs of items and services that are not part of the main bill.
- incidental damages — law: incurred by contract breach
- inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
- indefinite article — an article, as English a, an, that denotes class membership of the noun it modifies without particularizing it.
- independent clause — a clause that can stand alone as a sentence, containing a subject and a predicate with a finite verb, as I was there in the sentence I was there when he arrived.
- indiscriminatingly — In an indiscriminating manner.
- individual liberty — the liberty of an individual to exercise freely those rights generally accepted as being outside of governmental control.
- indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
- inductive relation — A relation R between domains D and E is inductive if for all chains d1 .. dn in D and e1 .. en in E,
- indus civilization — an ancient civilization that flourished in the Indus River valley, from about 2500 to 1500 b.c.: extensive archaeological excavations at the main sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in Pakistan.
- industrial diamond — a small often synthetic diamond, valueless as a gemstone, used in cutting tools, abrasives, etc
- industrial disease — occupational disease (def 1).
- industrial dispute — disagreement between workers and managers
- industrial hygiene — the science that assesses, controls, and prevents occupational factors or sources of stress in the workplace that may significantly affect the health and well-being of employees or of the community in general
- industrial vehicle — a vehicle designed for use in industry
- information island — (jargon) A body of information (i.e. electronic files) that needs to be shared but has no network connection.
- informatory double — a double intended to inform one's partner that one has a strong hand and to urge a bid regardless of the strength of his or her hand.
- instrument landing — an aircraft landing accomplished by use of gauges on the instrument panel and ground-based radio equipment, with limited reference to outside visual signals.
- interbroker dealer — a specialist who matches the needs of different market makers and facilitates dealings between them
- interdealer broker — an agent who is paid a commission to bring buyers and sellers together
- interdependability — capable of being depended on; worthy of trust; reliable: a dependable employee.
- interlacing arcade — an arcade, especially a blind one, composed of arches (interlacing arches) so arranged and cut that each arch seems to intersect and be intersected by one or more other arches.
- international code — a code used at sea by the navies of certain nations, using a series of flags representing digits from zero through nine.
- invalidity benefit — (formerly, in the British National Insurance scheme) a weekly payment to a person who had been off work through illness for more than six months: replaced by incapacity benefit in 1995
- 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.
- italian somaliland — a former Italian colony and trust territory in E Africa: now part of the Democratic Somali Republic.
- kirtland's warbler — a wood warbler, Dendroica kirtlandii, breeding only in north-central Michigan and wintering in the Bahamas, bluish gray above, striped with black and pale yellow below: an endangered species.
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- labeled bracketing — a representation of the constituent structure of a string, as a word or sentence, comparable to a tree diagram, in which each constituent is shown in brackets and given a subscript grammatical label, with each bracketed item corresponding to a node in a tree diagram.
- labrador retriever — one of a breed of retrievers having a short, thick, oily, solid black or yellow coat, raised originally in Newfoundland.
- 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.
- landscape painting — art: depicting natural scenery
- laning and zierler — (language) Possibly the first true working algebraic compiler. Written by J.H. Laning Jr and N. Zierler in 1953-1954 to run on MIT's Whirlwind computer.
- laugh like a drain — to laugh loudly and coarsely
- laying on of hands — Theology. a rite in which the cleric's hands are placed on the head of a person being confirmed, ordained, or the like.
- learned profession — any of the three vocations of theology, law, and medicine, commonly held to require highly advanced learning. Compare profession (def 1).
- light displacement — the weight of a ship with all its permanent equipment, excluding the weight of cargo, persons, ballast, dunnage, and fuel, but usually including the weight of permanent ballast and water used to operate steam machinery.
- limit-state design — a design criterion specifying that with acceptable probabilities a structure will not reach a limit state in which it either is unfit for the use for which it was designed (unavailability limit state) or fails (ultimate limit state)
- limiting adjective — (in English and some other languages) one of a small group of adjectives that modify the nouns to which they are applied by restricting rather than describing or qualifying. This, some, and certain are limiting adjectives.
- 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.
- literal-mindedness — the quality or state of tending to take words in their literal sense
- little namaqualand — an arid coastal region in the S part of Namibia, extending into the Cape of Good Hope province of the Republic of South Africa, divided by the Orange River into two regions, one in Namibia (Great Namaqualand) the other in South Africa (Little Namaqualand) inhabited by the Nama.
- little spotted cat — a small New World tiger cat, Felis tigrinus, ranging from Costa Rica to northern Argentina.
- little st. bernard — Great, a mountain pass between SW Switzerland and NW Italy, in the Pennine Alps: Napoleon led his army through it in 1800; location of a hospice. 8108 feet (2470 meters) high.
- 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.
- long-distance call — phone call: not local area
- lunitidal interval — the period of time between the moon's transit and the next high lunar tide.
- maison-de-molieres — Comédie Française.