18-letter words containing h, a, r
- legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
- lesser whitethroat — an Old World warbler, Sylvia curruca, having a greyish-brown plumage with a white throat and underparts
- lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
- lightning arrester — a device for preventing damage to radio, telephonic, or other electric equipment from lightning or other high-voltage currents, using spark gaps to carry the current to the ground without passing through the device.
- like a house afire — a building in which people live; residence for human beings.
- 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.
- liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
- literae humaniores — (at Oxford University) the faculty concerned with Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and philosophy; classics
- lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- 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.
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- look the other way — look in the opposite direction
- louisiana purchase — a treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
- lower klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- 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
- lubber grasshopper — plains grasshopper.
- 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.
- make heavy weather — to bring into existence by shaping or changing material, combining parts, etc.: to make a dress; to make a channel; to make a work of art.
- make short work of — exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
- manchester terrier — one of a breed of slender terriers having a short, glossy, black-and-tan coat, raised originally in Manchester, England.
- manhattan district — (during World War II) the code name for a unit of US army engineers established in 1942 to construct secret sites for the development of the atomic bomb
- many happy returns — When it is someone's birthday, people sometimes say 'Many happy returns' to them as a way of greeting them.
- marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.
- marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
- materials handling — the loading, unloading, and movement of goods, as within a factory or warehouse, especially by the aid of mechanical devices.
- maternity hospital — birthing facility
- mathematical error — a mistake in a mathematical calculation, etc
- mechanical drawing — drawing, as of machinery, done with the aid of rulers, scales, compasses, etc.
- mental health care — services devoted to the treatment of mental illnesses and the improvement of mental health in people with mental disorders or problems
- menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
- merchant of venice — a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.
- mergui archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the Andaman Sea, off the Tenasserim coast of S Myanmar: mountainous and forested
- metacentric height — the distance between the center of gravity and the metacenter of a floating body, as of a vessel.
- metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
- methacrylate resin — an acrylic resin formed by polymerizing the esters or amides of methacrylic acid.
- methyl transferase — any of a class of enzymes that catalyze the transfer of methyl groups from one molecule to another.
- methylated spirits — ethyl alcohol denatured with methyl alcohol for the purpose of preventing its use as an alcoholic beverage.
- 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.
- middle high german — the High German language of the period 1100–1500. Abbreviation: MHG.
- middle-of-the-road — favoring, following, or characterized by an intermediate position between two extremes, especially in politics; moderate.
- miniature pinscher — one of a German breed of toy dogs resembling a smaller version of the Doberman pinscher, having a flat skull, a smooth coat, erect ears, and a docked tail, bred originally as a watchdog.
- minister of health — a person appointed to head the government department of health
- 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).
- monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
- monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
- monte carlo method — a technique for numerically approximating the solution of a mathematical problem by studying the distribution of some random variable, often generated by a computer.