19-letter words containing f, l, a, n
- inglenook fireplace — a large fireplace with a space on either side
- intentional fallacy — (in literary criticism) an assertion that the intended meaning of the author is not the only or most important meaning; a fallacy involving an assessment of a literary work based on the author's intended meaning rather than on actual response to the work.
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- interferometrically — By means of interferometry.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- italian east africa — a former Italian territory in E Africa, formed in 1936 by the merging of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland with newly conquered Ethiopia: taken by the British Imperial forces 1941.
- jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
- judgment by default — a judgment in the plaintiff's favour when the defendant fails to plead or to appear
- judicial conference — a conference of judges held to discuss improvements in methods or judicial procedure through court rules or otherwise.
- kingdom of lorraine — an early medieval kingdom on the Meuse, Moselle, and Rhine rivers: later a duchy
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- lady of the evening — a prostitute.
- lagrangian function — kinetic potential.
- land of enchantment — New Mexico (used as a nickname).
- land of opportunity — Arkansas (used as a nickname).
- landrum-griffin act — an act of Congress (1959) outlawing secondary boycotts, requiring public disclosure of the financial records of unions, and guaranteeing the use of secret ballots in union voting.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- leading aircraftman — the rank above aircraftman
- leading coefficient — the coefficient of the term of highest degree in a given polynomial. 5 is the leading coefficient in 5 x 3 + 3 x 2 − 2 x + 1.
- level of attainment — one of ten groupings, each with its own attainment criteria based on pupil age and ability, within which a pupil is assessed
- level playing field — a state of equality; an equal opportunity.
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- lift the curtain on — to begin
- line of demarcation — a separation between things deemed to be distinct
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- load-bearing printf — (programming, humour) The kind of bug present in a program which works correctly when producing debug output but fails when the debugging is turned off. The expression combines load-bearing wall and printf as used in debugging by printf.
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- lymphoproliferation — (medicine) the excessive production of lymphocytes.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- mail transfer agent — Message Transfer Agent
- make oneself scarce — insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant: Meat and butter were scarce during the war.
- manned space flight — space travel in vehicles with a human crew
- manufacturing plant — factory
- mary wollstonecraft — Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) 1759–97, English author and feminist (mother of Mary Shelley).
- mid-autumn festival — a Chinese festival that is held to celebrate the end of the summer harvest, when the crops have been gathered.
- missing fundamental — a tone, not present in the sound received by the ear, whose pitch is that of the difference between the two tones that are sounded
- municipal bond fund — a mutual fund that invests in municipal bonds.
- mutual fund company — a company that sells and manages mutual funds
- negation by failure — An extralogical feature of Prolog and other logic programming languages in which failure of unification is treated as establishing the negation of a relation. For example, if Ronald Reagan is not in our database and we asked if he was an American, Prolog would answer "no".
- neufchâtel (cheese) — a soft white cheese prepared from whole milk or skim milk and eaten fresh or cured
- non-confidentiality — spoken, written, acted on, etc., in strict privacy or secrecy; secret: a confidential remark.
- non-confrontational — tending toward or ready for confrontation: They came to the meeting with a confrontational attitude.
- non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
- nonforfeiture value — any benefit, as cash or other form of insurance, available to a life-insurance policyholder who discontinues premium payments on the policy.
- nordrhein-westfalen — German name of North Rhine-Westphalia.
- norfolk island pine — a coniferous evergreen tree, Araucaria heterophylla (or A. excelsa), having whorled branches and needlelike foliage, widely cultivated as a houseplant.
- on someone's behalf — in / on behalf of, as a representative of or a proxy for: On behalf of my colleagues, I address you tonight.
- open the floodgates — If events open the floodgates to something, they make it possible for that thing to happen much more often or much more seriously than before.