17-letter words containing h, o, l, e, n
- heavy 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.
- helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
- helicopter parent — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- henry of portugal — ("the Navigator") 1394–1460, prince of Portugal: sponsor of geographic explorations.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- hillel foundation — a national organization, founded in 1924 by the B'nai B'rith, that institutes and administers programs designed to enrich the religious, cultural, and social life of Jewish college students.
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
- hold one's end up — the last part or extremity, lengthwise, of anything that is longer than it is wide or broad: the end of a street; the end of a rope.
- hold one's ground — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- hold one's horses — a large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous quadruped, Equus caballus, domesticated since prehistoric times, bred in a number of varieties, and used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.
- hold one's tongue — Anatomy. the usually movable organ in the floor of the mouth in humans and most vertebrates, functioning in eating, in tasting, and, in humans, in speaking.
- holding operation — a plan or procedure devised to prolong the existing situation
- hole in the heart — a defect of the heart in which there is an abnormal opening in any of the walls dividing the four heart chambers
- holistic medicine — incorporating the concept of holism, or the idea that the whole is more than merely the sum of its parts, in theory or practice: holistic psychology.
- hollandaise sauce — a sauce of egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and seasonings.
- hollerith, herman — Herman Hollerith
- holy roman empire — a Germanic empire located chiefly in central Europe that began with the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in a.d. 800 (or, according to some historians, with the coronation of Otto the Great, king of Germany, in a.d. 962) and ended with the renunciation of the Roman imperial title by Francis II in 1806, and was regarded theoretically as the continuation of the Western Empire and as the temporal form of a universal dominion whose spiritual head was the pope.
- homeland security — national defence
- homo floresiensis — a possible species of very small, primitive human: its fossils were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.
- honorable mention — a citation conferred on a contestant, exhibit, etc., having exceptional merit though not winning a top honor or prize.
- hornblende schist — a variety of schist containing needles of hornblende that lie in parallel planes.
- horst wessel song — the official song of the Nazi party in Germany from 1933 to 1945.
- hospital gangrene — Pathology. a contagious, often fatal gangrene, especially involving amputation stumps and war wounds, occurring usually in crowded, ill-kept hospitals, and caused by putrefactive bacteria.
- hot on sb's heels — If you say that someone is hot on your heels, you are emphasizing that they are chasing you and are not very far behind you.
- household ammonia — diluted ammonia, often having a small quantity of detergent, used in the home for cleaning.
- how the land lies — the prevailing conditions or state of affairs
- hubble's constant — the ratio of the recessional velocity of galaxies to their distance from the sun, with current measurements of its value ranging from 50 to 100 km/sec per megaparsec.
- hurler's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by physical deformity and mental deficiency
- hydrogen chloride — a colorless gas, HCl, having a pungent odor: the anhydride of hydrochloric acid.
- hydrogen fluoride — a colorless corrosive gas, HF, the anhydride of hydrofluoric acid, used chiefly as a catalyst and in the fluorination of hydrocarbons.
- hydrogen sulphide — Chemistry
- hydrothermal vent — an opening on the floor of the sea from which hot, mineral-rich solutions issue. Compare vent1 (def 2).
- hyperalimentation — overfeeding.
- hyperbolic cosine — one of a group of functions of an angle expressed as a relationship between the distances of a point on a hyperbola to the origin and to the coordinate axes; cosh
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperchlorination — Chemistry. to combine or treat with chlorine. to introduce chlorine atoms into an organic compound by an addition or substitution reaction.
- hyperinflationary — (economics) Having very high levels of inflation.
- hyperpolarisation — Alternative spelling of hyperpolarization.
- hyperpolarization — The act or process of hyperpolarizing.
- hypodermic needle — a hollow needle used to inject solutions subcutaneously.
- hypoglossal nerve — either one of the twelfth pair of cranial nerves, consisting of motor fibers that innervate the muscles of the tongue.
- ignoratio elenchi — the fallacy of offering proof irrelevant to the proposition in question.
- implosion therapy — a form of behavior therapy involving intensive recollection and review of anxiety-producing situations or events in a patient's life in an attempt to develop more appropriate responses to similar situations in the future.
- in all likelihood — very probably
- in double harness — in a harness for two animals pulling the same carriage, plow, etc.
- in the altogether — wholly; entirely; completely; quite: altogether fitting.
- in the front line — Someone who is in the front line has to play a very important part in defending or achieving something.
- incomprehensively — In an incomprehensive manner.