20-letter words containing g, c, a, l
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- lord high chancellor — the highest judicial officer of the British crown: law adviser of the ministry, keeper of the great seal, presiding officer in the House of Lords, etc.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magnetic inclination — to plunge (something, as a cloth or sponge) temporarily into a liquid, so as to moisten it, dye it, or cause it to take up some of the liquid: He dipped the brush into the paint bucket.
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
- margaret of scotland — Saint. 1045–93, queen consort of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her piety and benefactions to the church led to her canonization (1250). Feast days: June 10, Nov 16
- mechanical advantage — the ratio of output force to the input force applied to a mechanism.
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- negative electricity — the electricity present in a body or substance that has an excess of electrons, as the electricity developed on a resin when rubbed with flannel.
- nephroangiosclerosis — (pathology) sclerosis of the renal arterioles.
- neurophysiologically — In terms of, or with regard to, neurophysiology.
- neuropsychologically — In terms of or by means of neuropsychology.
- no lack of something — If you say there is no lack of something, you are emphasizing that there is a great deal of it.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- normal magnification — the magnification produced by a telescope or microscope such that the diameter of the exit pupil of the instrument is equal to the diameter of the pupil of the eye.
- omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
- ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.
- open learning centre — an establishment which provides further education on a flexible part-time basis
- optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
- oscillating universe — a variant model of the closed universe in which the universe undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction.
- ovo-lacto vegetarian — a vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy products
- ovo-lacto-vegetarian — lacto-ovo-vegetarian.
- oxyacetylene welding — welding using an oxyacetylene burner
- peremptory challenge — a formal objection to the service of a juror by a party to a criminal prosecution or a civil action that requires no showing of cause.
- perpendicular gothic — the style of Gothic architecture in England during the 14th and 15th centuries, characterized by tracery having vertical lines, a four-centred arch, and fan vaulting
- photogelatin process — collotype (def 1).
- phthalocyanine green — a pigment used in painting, derived from chlorinated copper phthalocyanine and characterized chiefly by its intense green color and permanence.
- physical meteorology — the branch of meteorology dealing with the study of optical, electrical, acoustical, and thermodynamic phenomena in the atmosphere, including the physics of clouds and precipitation.
- physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
- physiological saline — a salt solution that has the same osmotic pressure as that found in the blood or tissues
- planning application — In Britain, a planning application is a formal request to a local authority for permission to build something new or to add something to an existing building.
- pledge of allegiance — a solemn oath of allegiance or fidelity to the U.S., beginning, “I pledge allegiance to the flag,” and forming part of many flag-saluting ceremonies in the U.S.
- poza rica de hidalgo — a city in N Veracruz, in E Mexico.
- prescription glasses — corrective spectacles
- procedural agreement — regulations agreed between the parties to collective bargaining, defining the bargaining units, bargaining scope, procedures for collective bargaining, and the facilities to be provided to trade union representatives
- proportional spacing — a feature of some typewriters and other output devices whereby the space allotted to each character is determined by the width of the character
- pseudo-psychological — of or relating to psychology.
- psychological moment — the proper or critical time for achieving a desired result: She found the right psychological moment to make her request.
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.