18-letter words containing l, r, a
- alphaphotographics — A display made up of text characters combined with high-resolution photographic images (proposed as a future form of videotex).
- alternate straight — a hand consisting of five cards following one another by two in order of denomination, as a five, seven, nine, jack, and king, being of special value in certain games.
- alternating series — a series, usually infinite, in which successive terms have opposite signs, as 1 − ½ + ¼ − ⅛ +. ….
- alternative comedy — a style of comedy originating in the UK in the 1980s that seeks to avoid racist or sexist stereotypes, and usually puts forward left-wing, anti-establishment views
- alternative energy — a form of energy derived from a natural source, such as the sun, wind, tides, or waves
- alternative school — any public or private school having a special curriculum, especially an elementary or secondary school offering a more flexible program of study than a traditional school.
- alumina trihydrate — a crystalline, water-insoluble powder, Al(OH) 3 or Al 2 O 3 ⋅3H 2 O, obtained chiefly from bauxite: used in the manufacture of glass, ceramics, and printing inks, in dyeing, and in medicine as an antacid and in the treatment of ulcers.
- aluminum hydroxide — a white powder, Al(OH)3, obtained from bauxite and used to make glass, paper, etc. and in antacids
- amdahl corporation — (company) A US computer manufacturer. Amdahl is a major supplier of large mainframes, UNIX and Open Systems software and servers, data storage subsystems, data communications products, applications development software, and a variety of educational and consulting services. Amdahl products are sold in more than 30 countries for use in both open systems and IBM plug-compatible mainframe computing environments. Quarterly sales $397M, profits $13M (Aug 1994). In 1997 Amdahl became a division of Fujitsu.
- american brooklime — any of various speedwells found along brooks, in marshes, etc., as Veronica americana (American brooklime) a creeping plant having leafy stems and loose clusters of small blue flowers.
- american chameleon — anole: lizards of this type (family Iguanidae) are incorrectly called “chameleons”
- american civil war — the war in the U.S. between the North and the South, 1861–65.
- an overgrown child — an adult whose behaviour is characteristic of a child
- analogue recording — a sound recording process in which an audio input is converted into an analogous electrical waveform
- analytical reagent — a chemical compound of a known high standard of purity
- andorre la vieille — French name for the capital of Andorra, situated in the west of the principality. Pop: 22 035 (2003 est)
- andrew file system — (operating system, storage) (AFS) The distributed file system of the Andrew Project, adopted by the OSF as part of their Distributed Computing Environment.
- angel of the north — a steel sculpture of an angel with outstretched wings, created in 1998 by British sculptor Antony Gormley, which stands on a hilltop outside Gateshead, NE England. It stands 20 m (85 ft) high and has a wingspan of 54 m (175 ft)
- angular dispersion — a measure of the angular separation of light rays of different wavelength or color traversing a prism or diffraction grating, equal to the rate of change of the angle of deviation with respect to the change in wavelength.
- anthropomorphously — In an anthropomorphous manner; in a manner resembling that of a human.
- anti-commercialism — the principles, practices, and spirit of commerce.
- anti-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- anticholinesterase — any of a group of substances that inhibit the action of cholinesterase
- antifriction alloy — a metallic alloy, as Babbitt metal or bearing bronze, having antifriction qualities.
- antiprostaglandins — Plural form of antiprostaglandin.
- apartment building — An apartment building or apartment house is a tall building which contains different apartments on different floors.
- aphrodite of melos — a Greek statue of Venus in marble, c200 b.c., found in 1820 on Melos and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- apocryphal gospels — accounts of Christ's life that are not recognized as part of the New Testament
- appalachian spring — a dance (1944) choreographed by Martha Graham, with musical score by Aaron Copland.
- apparent solar day — the period of time between two successive passages of the sun's center across the same meridian.
- application server — 1.
A designer's or developer's suite of software that helps programmers isolate the business logic in their programs from the platform-related code. Application servers can handle all of the application logic and connectivity found in client-server applications. Many application servers also offer features such as transaction management, clustering and failover, and load balancing; nearly all offer ODBC support. 2. Production programs run on a mid-sized computer that handle all application operations between browser-based computers and an organisation's back-end business applications or databases. The application server works as a translator, allowing, for example, a customer with a browser to search an online retailer's database for pricing information. 3. The device on which application server software runs. Application Service Providers offer commercial access to such devices. - appraisal drilling — (in the oil industry) drilling carried out once oil or gas has been discovered in order to assess the extent of the field, the reserves, the possible rate of production, and the properties of the oil or gas
- apprentice plumber — a trainee plumber
- appropriation bill — a bill to set apart money for a specific purpose
- arbiter elegantiae — Gaius [gey-uh s] /ˈgeɪ əs/ (Show IPA), (Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Arbiter Elegantiae") died a.d. 66? Roman satirist.
- arbitration clause — a clause in a contract laying down that disputes between the parties should be settled by arbitration
- arctic archipelago — group of mostly large islands in the Arctic Ocean off the N coast of Canada
- aristotelian logic — the logical theories of Aristotle as developed in the Middle Ages, concerned mainly with syllogistic reasoning: traditional as opposed to modern or symbolic logic
- aristotles-lantern — a complex arrangement of muscles and calcareous teeth and plates forming an eversible organ in most echinoids, functioning in mastication.
- arm's-length price — a price of a transaction agreed in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved
- arsenic trisulfide — a yellow or red crystalline substance, As 2 S 3 , occurring in nature as the mineral orpiment, and used as a pigment (king's yellow) and in pyrotechnics.
- artificial gravity — a simulated gravity or sensation of weight established within a spacecraft by means of the craft's rotation, acceleration, or deceleration.
- artificial horizon — an aircraft instrument, using a gyroscope, that indicates the aircraft's attitude in relation to the horizontal
- artificial reality — virtual reality.
- as clear as a bell — If something is as clear as a bell, it is very clear indeed.
- as far as possible — to the greatest possible extent
- asciibetical order — (jargon, programming) /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a".
- asiatic black bear — a bear, Selenarctos thibetanus, of central and E Asia, whose coat is black with a pale V-shaped mark on the chest
- aspherical surface — a lens or mirror surface that does not form part of a sphere and is used to reduce aberrations
- assignment problem — (mathematics, algorithm) (Or "linear assignment") Any problem involving minimising the sum of C(a, b) over a set P of pairs (a, b) where a is an element of some set A and b is an element of set B, and C is some function, under constraints such as "each element of A must appear exactly once in P" or similarly for B, or both. For example, the a's could be workers and the b's projects. The problem is "linear" because the "cost function" C() depends only on the particular pairing (a, b) and is independent of all other pairings.