17-letter words containing l, a, r, o, i
- electroretinogram — A record of the electrical activity of the retina, used in medical diagnosis and research.
- electrostatically — In an electrostatic manner, by electrostatic means.
- emotional cripple — someone who is unable to feel or show true emotion and so cannot form relationships with other people
- empirical formula — a chemical formula indicating the proportion of each element present in a molecule
- environmentalists — Plural form of environmentalist.
- epicycloidal gear — a gear of an epicyclic train
- equal opportunity — policies that bar discrimination
- equatorial guinea — a republic of W Africa, consisting of Río Muni on the mainland and the island of Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea, with four smaller islands: ceded by Portugal to Spain in 1778; gained independence in 1968. Official languages: Spanish and French. Religion: Roman Catholic majority. Currency: franc. Capital: Malabo. Pop: 704 000 (2013 est). Area: 28 049 sq km (10 830 sq miles)
- ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
- exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
- exclusionary rule — a legal rule that evidence obtained illegally, as from a search without a warrant, may not be introduced at trial
- exfoliating cream — a granular cosmetic preparation that removes dead cells from the skin's surface
- external relation — a relation that does not hold between its relata, as 4 is greater than 2
- fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
- fermentation lock — a valve placed on the top of bottles of fermenting wine to allow bubbles to escape
- ferroelectric ram — Ferroelectric Random Access Memory
- field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
- fifth normal form — database normalisation
- fingerling potato — a finger-shaped potato
- first call on sth — If you have first call on something, you will be asked before anyone else whether you want to buy or use it.
- first normal form — database normalisation
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- flea in one's ear — a sharp rebuke
- floating currency — a currency that is free to fluctuate against other currencies in accordance with market forces
- floating dry dock — a dock that floats and can be lowered in the water for the entrance of a ship, and then raised for use as a dry dock
- flowering currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes sanguineum, growing to 2 to 3 metres (6 to 9ft) in height, with red, crimson, yellow, or white flowers: family Saxifragaceae
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fluid lubrication — lubrication in which bearing surfaces are separated by an oil film sustained by the motion of the parts
- fluvioterrestrial — (of animals) able to live in rivers and on land
- folie de grandeur — a delusion of grandeur; megalomania.
- fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
- foreign relations — (used with a singular verb) the field of foreign affairs: an expert in foreign relations.
- formative element — a morpheme that serves as an affix, not as a base, or root, in word formation.
- fra filippo lippi — Lippi, Fra Filippo.
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- fractionalization — Separation into parts by fractionalizing.
- fraternal society — a club or other association, usually of men, having a limited membership and devoted to professional, religious, charitable, or social activities.
- french provincial — noting, pertaining to, or resembling a style of furnishings and decoration originating in the provinces of France in the 18th century, derived from but less ornate than styles then current in Paris and featuring simply carved wood furniture, often with decorative curved moldings.
- french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
- front-line player — a regular player on a sports team or one who plays in the farthest forward position
- frostbite sailing — the sport of sailing in temperate latitudes during the winter despite cold weather.
- full linear group — the group of all nonsingular linear transformations mapping a finite-dimensional vector space into itself.
- functional isomer — any of several structural isomers that have the same molecular formula but with the atoms connected in different ways and therefore falling into different functional groups.
- garden heliotrope — the common valerian, Valeriana officinalis, especially when cultivated as an ornamental.
- garlic mayonnaise — mayonnaise flavoured with garlic
- genealogical tree — family tree.
- general admission — an admission charge for unreserved seats at a theatrical performance, sports event, etc.
- general sarmiento — a city in E Argentina, a suburb of Buenos Aires.
- generalized other — an individual's internalized impression of societal norms and expectations.
- genetic algorithm — (GA) An evolutionary algorithm which generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" or "genome". Chromosomes are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. "Crossover", the kind of recombination of chromosomes found in sexual reproduction in nature, is often also used in GAs. Here, an offspring's chromosome is created by joining segments choosen alternately from each of two parents' chromosomes which are of fixed length. GAs are useful for multidimensional optimisation problems in which the chromosome can encode the values for the different variables being optimised.