16-letter words containing i, l, o
- little brown bat — any of several small to medium-sized common bats of the genera Myotis and Eptesicus, found worldwide in caves, trees, and buildings, including M. lucifugus (little brown bat) and E. fuscus (big brown bat) a widespread North American species.
- littoral warfare — military combat conducted in coastal areas.
- live on the edge — take risks
- liver of sulphur — a mixture of potassium sulphides used as a fungicide and insecticide and in the treatment of skin diseases
- lloyd's register — a publication, issued annually by Lloyd's, consisting of a list of all of the world's seagoing vessels and including such information as their age, tonnage, and classification.
- loan translation — the process whereby a compound word or expression is created by literal translation of each of the elements of a compound word or expression in another language, as marriage of convenience from French mariage de convenance.
- lobe-finned fish — any fish that has rounded scales and lobed fins, as the coelacanth.
- local oscillator — the oscillator in a superheterodyne receiver whose output frequency is mixed with the incoming modulated radio-frequency carrier signal to produce the required intermediate frequency
- locomotor ataxia — tabes dorsalis.
- lodgepole (pine) — a Rocky Mountain pine (Pinus contorta) used for lumber, poles, etc.
- logical constant — one of the connectives of a given system of formal logic, esp those of the sentential calculus, not, and, or, and if … then …
- logical operator — any of the Boolean symbols or functions, as AND, OR, and NOT, denoting a Boolean operation; Boolean operator.
- logical relation — A relation R satisfying f R g <=> For all a, b, a R b => f a R g b This definition, by Plotkin, can be used to extend the definition of a relation on the types of a and b to a relation on functions.
- logical unit 6.2 — (networking) (LU6.2) A type of logical unit that governs peer-to-peer SNA communications. LU6.2 supports general communication between programs in a distributed processing environment. LU6.2 is characterised by a peer relationship between session partners, efficient use of a session for multiple transactions, comprehensive end-to-end error processing and a generic application program interface consisting of structured verbs that are mapped into a product inplementation. LU6.2 is used by IBM's TPF operating system.
- loire-atlantique — a department in NW France. 2695 sq. mi. (6980 sq. km). Capital: Nantes.
- long time no see — I haven't seen you for a long time
- long-established — having a long history; old
- long-tail claims — Long-tail claims are claims that are made or settled a long time after the insurance policy has expired.
- long-wire aerial — a travelling-wave aerial consisting of one or more conductors, the length of which usually exceeds several wavelengths
- longicorn beetle — any beetle of the family Cerambycidae, having a long narrow body, long legs, and long antennae
- lookout mountain — a mountain ridge in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama: a battle of the Civil War fought here, near Chattanooga, Tenn. 1863; highest point, 2126 feet (648 meters).
- loop combination — A program transformation where the bodies of two loops are merged into one thus reducing the overhead of manipulating and testing the control variable and branching. Further optimisation of the merged code may then become possible. In horizontal loop combination the bodies of the loops are largely independent so only the loop overhead is saved. Vertical loop combination applies where the results of the first loop are used by the second. Combining the two allows the intermediate results to be used immediately (in registers) rather than requiring them to be stored in an array. The functional equivalent of horizontal and vertical loop combination are tupling and fusion.
- loose connection — an imperfect electrical connection, as in a plug or car engine
- lord chamberlain — (in Britain) the chief official of the royal household
- lord howe island — an island in the S Pacific, E of Australia: a dependency of New South Wales. 5 sq. mi. (13 sq. km).
- lord proprietary — (in Colonial America) an owner, governor, or grantee of a proprietary colony
- lords-and-ladies — (used with a singular verb) cuckoopint.
- lose one's shirt — a long- or short-sleeved garment for the upper part of the body, usually lightweight and having a collar and a front opening.
- lose one's voice — If you lose your voice, you cannot speak for a while because of an illness.
- lost river range — a mountain range in E central Idaho. Highest peak, Borah Peak (also highest in the state), 12,662 feet (3862 meters).
- louise bourgeois — Léon Victor Auguste [ley-awn veek-tawr oh-gyst] /leɪˈɔ̃ vikˈtɔr oʊˈgyst/ (Show IPA), 1851–1925, French statesman: Nobel Peace Prize 1920.
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lower california — Baja California.
- lower palatinate — See under Palatinate (def 1).
- luminosity class — a classification of stars of a given spectral type according to their luminosity, breaking them down into dwarfs, giants, and supergiants.
- lymphangiography — x-ray visualization of lymph vessels and nodes following injection of a contrast medium.
- lz77 compression — The first algorithm to use the Lempel-Ziv substitutional compression schemes, proposed in 1977. LZ77 compression keeps track of the last n bytes of data seen, and when a phrase is encountered that has already been seen, it outputs a pair of values corresponding to the position of the phrase in the previously-seen buffer of data, and the length of the phrase. In effect the compressor moves a fixed-size "window" over the data (generally referred to as a "sliding window"), with the position part of the (position, length) pair referring to the position of the phrase within the window. The most commonly used algorithms are derived from the LZSS scheme described by James Storer and Thomas Szymanski in 1982. In this the compressor maintains a window of size N bytes and a "lookahead buffer", the contents of which it tries to find a match for in the window: while (lookAheadBuffer not empty) { get a pointer (position, match) to the longest match in the window for the lookahead buffer; if (length > MINIMUM_MATCH_LENGTH) { output a (position, length) pair; shift the window length characters along; } else { output the first character in the lookahead buffer; shift the window 1 character along; } } Decompression is simple and fast: whenever a (POSITION, LENGTH) pair is encountered, go to that POSITION in the window and copy LENGTH bytes to the output. Sliding-window-based schemes can be simplified by numbering the input text characters mod N, in effect creating a circular buffer. The sliding window approach automatically creates the LRU effect which must be done explicitly in LZ78 schemes. Variants of this method apply additional compression to the output of the LZSS compressor, which include a simple variable-length code (LZB), dynamic Huffman coding (LZH), and Shannon-Fano coding (ZIP 1.x), all of which result in a certain degree of improvement over the basic scheme, especially when the data are rather random and the LZSS compressor has little effect. An algorithm was developed which combines the ideas behind LZ77 and LZ78 to produce a hybrid called LZFG. LZFG uses the standard sliding window, but stores the data in a modified trie data structure and produces as output the position of the text in the trie. Since LZFG only inserts complete *phrases* into the dictionary, it should run faster than other LZ77-based compressors. All popular archivers (arj, lha, zip, zoo) are variations on LZ77.
- lz78 compression — A substitutional compression scheme which works by entering phrases into a dictionary and then, when a reoccurrence of that particular phrase is found, outputting the dictionary index instead of the phrase. Several algorithms are based on this principle, differing mainly in the manner in which they manage the dictionary. The most well-known Lempel-Ziv scheme is Terry Welch's Lempel-Ziv Welch variant of LZ78.
- machine moulding — the process of making moulds and cores for castings by mechanical means, usually by compacting the moulding sand by vibration instead of by ramming down
- macro-linguistic — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macroclimatology — the study of the climatic conditions of a large area.
- macrolepidoptera — a collector's name for that part of the lepidoptera that comprises the butterflies and the larger moths (noctuids, geometrids, bombycids, springtails, etc): a term without taxonomic significance
- macrolinguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- magellanic cloud — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- magnetic anomaly — a departure from the normal magnetic field of the earth.
- magneto-electric — of or relating to the induction of electric current or electromotive force by means of permanent magnets.
- magnolia warbler — a black and yellow wood warbler, Dendroica magnolia, of North America.
- maid of all work — a maid who does all types of housework
- mail-order house — a retail firm that conducts its business by receiving orders and shipping its merchandise through the mail and that supplies its customers with catalogs, circulars, etc.
- make a complaint — If a guest makes a complaint, they express their dissatisfaction with something.