19-letter words containing l, e, a, t
- gravitational field — the attractive effect, considered as extending throughout space, of matter on other matter.
- great wall of china — a system of fortified walls with a roadway along the top, constructed as a defense for China against the nomads of the regions that are now Mongolia and Manchuria: completed in the 3rd century b.c., but later repeatedly modified and rebuilt. 2000 miles (3220 km) long.
- great-grandchildren — a grandchild of one's son or daughter.
- gregorian telescope — a telescope similar in design to the Cassegrainian telescope but less widely used.
- gulf of carpentaria — a shallow inlet of the Arafura Sea, in N Australia between Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula
- gulf of tehuantepec — an inlet of the Pacific on the south coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in S Mexico
- half wave rectifier — A half wave rectifier removes the negative component of an alternating signal leaving only the positive part.
- half-wave rectifier — a rectifier that changes only one half of a cycle of alternating current into a pulsating, direct current.
- halt and catch fire — (humour, processor) (HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to read every memory location sequentially until reset.
- hamiltonian problem — (computability) (Or "Hamilton's problem") A problem in graph theory posed by William Hamilton: given a graph, is there a path through the graph which visits each vertex precisely once (a "Hamiltonian path")? Is there a Hamiltonian path which ends up where it started (a "Hamiltonian cycle" or "Hamiltonian tour")? Hamilton's problem is NP-complete. It has numerous applications, sometimes completely unexpected, in computing.
- handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
- hang in the balance — to fasten or attach (a thing) so that it is supported only from above or at a point near its own top; suspend.
- hang on the lips of — to listen to with close attention
- hatfield-mccoy feud — a blood feud between two mountain clans on the West Virginia–Kentucky border, the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky, that grew out of their being on opposite sides during the Civil War and was especially violent during 1880–90.
- haul over the coals — a black or dark-brown combustible mineral substance consisting of carbonized vegetable matter, used as a fuel. Compare anthracite, bituminous coal, lignite.
- haute vulgarisation — vulgarization, or popularization, on a higher level, esp. as done by academics, scholars, etc.
- have a problem with — to be unable to understand or do
- have half a mind to — to have the intention of
- have the last laugh — to express mirth, pleasure, derision, or nervousness with an audible, vocal expulsion of air from the lungs that can range from a loud burst of sound to a series of quiet chuckles and is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and bodily movements.
- head-and-tail light — a small South American characin fish, Hemmigrammus ocellifer, having shiny red eyes and tail spots, often kept in aquariums.
- health professional — a person trained to work in any field of physical or mental health.
- heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
- heel-and-toe racing — race walking.
- hepatic portal vein — a vein connecting two capillary networks in the liver
- hepatoportal system — a vascular arrangement in vertebrates through which blood is transported into the liver from capillaries of the stomach, spleen, duodenum, pancreas, and intestines.
- heptachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twenty-four isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing seven chlorine atoms.
- hermetically sealed — airtight
- hexafluoroplatinate — (chemistry) The univalent anion PtF6- prepared by reacting platinum hexafluoride with certain metals or other elements.
- holiday entitlement — the number of days of paid holiday in a year that a worker is entitled to take
- holy innocents' day — December 28, a day of religious observance commemorating the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by Herod's order.
- horizontal encoding — (processor) An instruction set where each field (a bit or group of bits) in an instruction word controls some functional unit or gate directly, as opposed to vertical encoding where instruction fields are decoded (by hard-wired logic or microcode) to produce the control signals. Horizontal encoding allows all possible combinations of control signals (and therefore operations) to be expressed as instructions whereas vertical encoding uses a shorter instruction word but can only encode those combinations of operations built into the decoding logic. An instruction set may use a mixture of horizontal and vertical encoding within each instruction. Because an architecture using horizontal encoding typically requires more instruction word bits it is sometimes known as a very long instruction word (VLIW) architecture.
- horsehair toadstool — a small basidiomycetous fungus, Marasmius androsaceus, having a rusty coloured cap and very slender black stems. It is related to the fairy ring mushroom, but is commonly found among conifers and heather
- hospital facilities — the equipment and services provided by a hospital
- hotel accommodation — the facilities and the quality of accommodation provided by a hotel
- hotel des invalides — a military hospital built in Paris in the 17th and 18th centuries by Libéral Bruant and J. H. Mansart: famous for its chapel dome, the tomb of Napoleon, and as a military museum.
- humanist technology — (philosophy) Technology centered around the interests, needs, and well-being of humans.
- hydrochlorothiazide — a crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 7 H 8 ClN 3 O 4 S 2 , used as a diuretic and in the treatment of hypertension.
- hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
- hyper-nationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
- hyperbolic cosecant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of hyperbolic sine
- hypercholesteraemia — (medicine) An abnormally high level of cholesterol in the blood.
- hyperfocal distance — the distance, at a given f number, between a camera lens and the nearest point (hyperfocal point) having satisfactory definition when focused at infinity.
- hyperphosphorylated — Simple past tense and past participle of hyperphosphorylate.
- hypocholesterolemia — an abnormally low amount of cholesterol in the blood.
- hypolipoproteinemia — An abnormally low level of lipoprotein in the blood.
- hysterosalpingogram — An X-ray image taken during hysterosalpingography.
- immunohistochemical — (biology) Of, pertaining to, or by means of immunohistochemistry, the use of immunological techniques to study the chemistry of tissues.
- imperative language — (language) Any programming language that specifies explicit manipulation of the state of the computer system, not to be confused with a procedural language, which specifies an explicit sequence of steps to perform. An example of an imperative (but non-procedural) language is a data manipulation language for a relational database management system. This specifies changes to the database but does not necessarily require anyone to specify a sequence of steps. Both contrast with declarative languages, which specify neither explicit state manipulation nor a sequence of steps.
- impressionistically — In an impressionistic manner.
- in particular terms — If you say something in particular terms, you say it using a particular type or level of language or using language which clearly shows your attitude.