18-letter words containing l, e, g, h
- diphosphoglycerate — an ester of phosphoric acid and glyceric acid that occurs in the blood and that promotes the release of hemoglobin-bound oxygen.
- drinking chocolate — sweetened cocoa powder
- echoencephalograph — a device that employs reflected ultrasonic waves to examine the position of brain structures.
- eggshell porcelain — a type of very thin translucent porcelain originally made in China
- eighty-column mind — (abuse) The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from punched card to paper tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried "face down, 9-edge first" (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as follows: He died at the console Of hunger and thirst. Next day he was buried, Face down, 9-edge first. The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. See fear and loathing, card walloper.
- eighty-twenty rule — (programming) The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem. For example, parsing e-mail addresses in "From:" lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about 60% of actual "From:" lines are in the format "From: Their Name <[email protected]>", with a far more constrained idea of what can be in "user" or "host" than in RFC 2822. Another 25% just add double-quotes around "Their Name". Matching just those two patterns would thus cover 85% of "From:" lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822. (Adding support for "From: [email protected]" and "From: [email protected] (Their Name) " brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like "From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap)
- electric discharge — electricity emitted
- electrocardiograph — A machine used for electrocardiography.
- electrophotography — Any of several methods of photocopying in which an image is created and then transferred between surfaces using static electricity.
- ethnomethodologist — A person engaged in ethnomethodology.
- ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
- ethnopsychological — Relating to ethnopsychology.
- euclid's algorithm — (algorithm) (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
- exhibition killing — the murder of a hostage by terrorists, filmed for broadcasting on television or the internet
- fall to the ground — (of a plan, theory, etc) to be rendered invalid, esp because of lack of necessary information
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- fehling's solution — a blue solution of copper sulfate, Rochelle salt, and sodium hydroxide, used to test for the presence of a sugar, aldehyde, etc.
- flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
- forethoughtfulness — The condition of being forethoughtful.
- general anesthesia — induced unconsciousness
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- gestalt psychology — (sometimes lowercase) the theory or doctrine that physiological or psychological phenomena do not occur through the summation of individual elements, as reflexes or sensations, but through gestalts functioning separately or interrelatedly.
- gladden sb's heart — If you say that something gladdens someone's heart, you mean that it makes them feel pleased and hopeful.
- glomerulonephritis — a kidney disease affecting the capillaries of the glomeruli, characterized by albuminuria, edema, and hypertension.
- go for the jugular — Anatomy. of or relating to the throat or neck. noting or pertaining to any of certain large veins of the neck, especially one (external jugular vein) collecting blood from the superficial parts of the head or one (internal jugular vein) collecting blood from within the skull.
- go off half-cocked — (of a firearm) at the position of half cock.
- goods and chattels — personal property
- grandfather clause — U.S. History. a clause in the constitutions of some Southern states after 1890 intended to permit whites to vote while disfranchising blacks: it exempted from new literacy and property qualifications for voting those men entitled to vote before 1867 and their lineal descendants.
- grease the palm of — to influence by giving money to; bribe
- grist for the mill — If you say that something is grist for the mill, you mean that it is useful for a particular purpose or helps support someone's point of view.
- hardy-weinberg law — a principle stating that in an infinitely large, randomly mating population in which selection, migration, and mutation do not occur, the frequencies of alleles and genotypes do not change from generation to generation.
- hash house slinger — a person who serves in a cheap cafe
- haulage contractor — a person or firm that transports goods by lorry
- heart-lung machine — a device through which blood is shunted temporarily for oxygenation during surgery, while the heart or a lung is being repaired.
- heavy middleweight — a professional wrestler weighing 177–187 pounds (81–85 kg)
- hegelian dialectic — an interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which some assertible proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis) the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis)
- helicopter gunship — military attack helicopter
- hell or high water — whatever difficulties may arise
- hepatosplenomegaly — Enlargement of both the liver and spleen.
- high-grade mineral — a mineral fulfilling certain conditions as regards purity or other physical properties
- high-sided vehicle — an official term for lorries, vans, trailers, etc with a height greater than that of motor cars
- high-tensile steel — low-alloy steel which can withstand great strain without breaking or becoming deformed, having a yield strength range of 50,000 to 100,000 pounds per square inch
- highbush blueberry — a spreading, bushy shrub, Vaccinium corymbosum, of eastern North America, having small, urn-shaped, white or pinkish flowers, and bluish-black edible fruit, growing about 10 feet (3 meters) high.
- highlight halftone — dropout (def 7).
- historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
- horseless carriage — an automobile: The horse and buggy were eventually replaced by the horseless carriage.
- houghton-le-spring — a town in N England, in Sunderland unitary authority, Tyne and Wear: coal-mining. Pop: 36 746 (2001)
- house of delegates — the lower house of the General Assembly in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland.
- hydrogen electrode — a standard reference electrode with a potential of zero, used in pH measurements, consisting of a platinum-black surface covered with hydrogen bubbles.
- i know the feeling — You say 'I know the feeling' to show that you understand or feel sorry about a problem or difficult experience that someone is telling you about.