17-letter words containing i, r, s, a
- jerusalem cricket — a large, nocturnal, wingless, long-horned grasshopper, Stenopelmatus fuscus, occuring chiefly in loose soil and sand along the Pacific coast of the U.S.
- job advertisement — an announcement in a newspaper, on television, or on a poster about a post of employment
- john of salisbury — c1115–80, English prelate and scholar.
- judgment of paris — the decision by Paris to award Aphrodite the golden apple of discord competed for by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera.
- jurisprudentially — In terms of jurisprudence.
- jus primae noctis — droit du seigneur.
- karitane hospital — a hospital for young babies and their mothers
- kawasaki syndrome — a syndrome, usually afflicting children, characterized by high fever, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, rashes, irritated eyes and mucous membranes, etc. with possible damage to the cardiovascular system
- kerguelen islands — an archipelago in the S Indian Ocean: a possession of France. 2394 sq. mi. (6200 sq. km).
- key man insurance — Key man insurance is an insurance policy taken out by a small company on the life of a senior executive whose death would create a serious loss.
- kidney transplant — surgery to replace a kidney
- king george's war — a war (1744–48) waged by England and its colonies against France, constituting the North American phase of the War of the Austrian Succession.
- king philip's war — the war (1675–76) between New England colonists and a confederation of Indians under their leader, King Philip.
- kolar gold fields — a city in S India, in SE Karnataka: a major gold-mining centre since 1881. Pop: 176 000 (2005 est)
- l'hospital's rule — the theorem that for the quotient of two functions satisfying certain conditions on a given closed interval, each having infinite limit or zero as limit at a given point, the limit of the quotient at the given point is equal to the limit of the quotient of the derivatives of each function.
- la perouse strait — a strait between S Sakhalin Island, Russia and N Hokkaido Island, Japan connecting the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. 25 miles (40 km) wide.
- ladies' auxiliary — an organization usually made up of the wives of members of another organization
- lambda expression — (mathematics) A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
- lambdoidal suture — the lambda-shaped seam or line of joining between the occipital and two parietal bones at the back part of the skull.
- lan administrator — (job) A person who installs and maintains LAN hardware and software. A LAN administrator troubleshoots network usage and computer peripherals. He installs new users, performs system backups and data recovery, and resolves LAN communications problems.
- lancashire heeler — a small sturdy dog of a breed with a short thick black or liver-coloured coat with tan markings, often used for herding cattle
- landscape painter — artist who depicts natural scenery
- langerhans islets — islets of Langerhans
- langmuir isotherm — A Langmuir isotherm is a classical relationship between the concentrations of a solid and a fluid, used to describe a state of no change in the sorption process.
- lanthanide series — the series of rare-earth elements of atomic numbers 57 through 71 (lanthanum through lutetium).
- larmor precession — the precession of charged particles, as electrons, placed in a magnetic field, the frequency of the precession (Larmor frequency) being equal to the electronic charge times the strength of the magnetic field divided by 4π times the mass.
- last-in first-out — stack
- latent strabismus — the tendency, controllable by muscular effort, for one or both eyes to exhibit strabismus.
- latitudinarianism — Tolerance of other people's views, particularly in religious context.
- latter-day saints — a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- learner's license — a provisional driving licence
- learning-disabled — pertaining to or having a learning disability: a learning-disabled child.
- lebesgue integral — an integral obtained by application of the theory of measure and more general than the Riemann integral.
- legal proceedings — court case
- lewis with harris — the northernmost island of the Hebrides, in NW Scotland. 825 sq. mi. (2135 sq. km).
- lexical insertion — the process in which actual morphemes of a language are substituted either for semantic material or for place-fillers in the course of a derivation of a sentence
- liberal democrats — (in Britain) a political party with centrist policies; established in 1988 as the Social and Liberal Democrats when the Liberal Party merged with the Social Democratic Party; renamed Liberal Democrats in 1989
- librocubicularist — (rare) A person who reads in bed.
- limousine liberal — a wealthy left-wing person
- lincoln's sparrow — a North American sparrow, Melospiza lincolnii, having a buff breast with black streaks.
- line of scrimmage — an imaginary line parallel to the goal lines that passes from one sideline to the other through the point of the football closest to the goal line of each team.
- linear assignment — assignment problem
- lipopolysaccaride — a molecule, consisting of lipid and polysaccharide components, that is the main constituent of the cell walls of Gram-negative bacteria
- lithostratigraphy — the study or character of stratified rocks based solely on their physical and petrographic features.
- loco supra citato — l.s.c.
- loggerhead shrike — a common, North American shrike, Lanius ludovicianus, gray above and white below with black wings, tail, and facial mask.
- lombrosian school — a school of criminology, promulgating the theories and employing the methods developed by Lombroso.
- loose-leaf binder — a hard cover with metal rings inside which is used to hold loose pieces of paper
- louisiana tanager — western tanager.
- luggage insurance — insurance against the loss of luggage while travelling