17-letter words containing e, a, r, t
- lance of courtesy — a lance having a blunt head to prevent serious injury by a jouster to an opponent.
- landscape painter — artist who depicts natural scenery
- langerhans islets — islets of Langerhans
- langmuir isotherm — A Langmuir isotherm is a classical relationship between the concentrations of a solid and a fluid, used to describe a state of no change in the sorption process.
- language transfer — transfer (def 20).
- lanthanide series — the series of rare-earth elements of atomic numbers 57 through 71 (lanthanum through lutetium).
- laplace transform — a map of a function, as a signal, defined especially for positive real values, as time greater than zero, into another domain where the function is represented as a sum of exponentials.
- lares and penates — household gods
- latent strabismus — the tendency, controllable by muscular effort, for one or both eyes to exhibit strabismus.
- latter-day saints — a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- laurent's theorem — the theorem that a function that is analytic on an annulus can be represented by a Laurent series on the annulus.
- law of reflection — the principle that when a ray of light, radar pulse, or the like, is reflected from a smooth surface the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, and the incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal to the surface at the point of incidence all lie in the same plane.
- law of refraction — the principle that for a ray, radar pulse, or the like, that is incident on the interface of two media, the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence to the sine of the angle of refraction is equal to the ratio of the velocity of the ray in the first medium to the velocity in the second medium and the incident ray, refracted ray, and normal to the surface at the point of incidence all lie in the same plane.
- le morte d'arthur — a compilation and translation of French Arthurian romances by Sir Thomas Malory, printed by Caxton in 1485.
- lead acid battery — A lead acid battery is a 12-volt battery for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles consisting of lead-acid cells in series.
- lead to the altar — to marry
- leading indicator — A leading indicator is an economic indicator that changes before a change in the economy, and that can be used to predict future economic or financial activity.
- least upper bound — an upper bound that is less than or equal to all the upper bounds of a particular set. 3 is the least upper bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbr.: lub.
- lebesgue integral — an integral obtained by application of the theory of measure and more general than the Riemann integral.
- legendre equation — a differential equation of the form (1− x 2) d2y/dx2 − 2 xdy/dx + a (a + 1) y = 0, where a is an arbitrary constant.
- lempert operation — fenestration (def 3c).
- letters of marque — a former government document authorizing an individual to make reprisals on the subjects of an enemy nation, specif. to arm a ship and capture enemy merchant ships and cargo
- lettre de creance — letter of credit.
- level compensator — an automatic gain control device used in the receivers of telegraphic circuits.
- lewis with harris — the northernmost island of the Hebrides, in NW Scotland. 825 sq. mi. (2135 sq. km).
- lexical insertion — the process in which actual morphemes of a language are substituted either for semantic material or for place-fillers in the course of a derivation of a sentence
- liberal democrats — (in Britain) a political party with centrist policies; established in 1988 as the Social and Liberal Democrats when the Liberal Party merged with the Social Democratic Party; renamed Liberal Democrats in 1989
- liberal education — an education based primarily on the liberal arts, emphasizing the development of intellectual abilities as opposed to the acquisition of professional skills.
- lie in wait (for) — to wait so as to catch after planning an ambush or trap (for)
- life and/or death — If you say that something is a matter of life and death, you are emphasizing that it is extremely important, often because someone may die or suffer great harm if people do not act immediately.
- life of the party — most lively, outgoing person
- light mineral oil — a colorless, oily, almost tasteless, water-insoluble liquid, usually of either a standard light density (light mineral oil) or a standard heavy density (heavy mineral oil) consisting of mixtures of hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum by distillation: used chiefly as a lubricant, in the manufacture of cosmetics, and in medicine as a laxative.
- linear assignment — assignment problem
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- literary executor — a person entrusted with the publishable works and other papers of a deceased author.
- lithium carbonate — a colorless crystalline compound, Li 2 CO 3 , slightly soluble in water: used in ceramic and porcelain glazes, pharmaceuticals, and luminescent paints.
- litigation friend — a person acting on behalf of an infant or other person under legal disability
- loggerhead turtle — a sea turtle, Caretta caretta, having a large head: now greatly reduced in number.
- logical operation — Boolean operation.
- louisiana tanager — western tanager.
- lower paleolithic — See under Paleolithic.
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- macfarlane burnet — Sir (Frank) Macfarlane [muh k-fahr-luh n] /məkˈfɑr lən/ (Show IPA), 1899–1985, Australian physician: Nobel Prize in Physiology 1960.
- macroevolutionary — Pertaining to, or as a result of macroevolution.
- macroinvertebrate — (zoology) An invertebrate that is large enough to be seen without the use of a microscope.
- madiba generation — the generation born around 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the first president of a multiracial South Africa
- magnetic meridian — a line on the earth's surface, passing in the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field.
- magnetic roasting — roasting of a nonmagnetic ore to render it magnetic so that it can be separated from gangue by means of a magnetic field.