18-letter words containing l, y, r, i
- cranial osteopathy — osteopathy that focuses on the cranium and the spine
- credibility rating — a supposed measure of how far a person can be believed or trusted
- creeping paralysis — any slow process that causes a system, government, etc, to stop working efficiently
- cross-disciplinary — linking two or more fields of study
- crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
- crystal oscillator — a clear, transparent mineral or glass resembling ice.
- cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
- cultural sociology — the study of the origins and development of societal institutions, norms, and practices.
- currency principle — the principle that banks should be permitted to issue notes only against bullion or coin.
- cyclic pitch lever — a lever in a helicopter to change the angle of attack of individual rotor blades, causing the helicopter to move forwards, backwards, or sideways
- daisywheel printer — (printer) A kind of impact printer where the characters are arranged on the ends of the spokes of a wheel (resembling the petals on a daisy). The wheel (usually made of plastic) is rotated to select the character to print and then an electrically operated hammer mechanism bends the selected spoke forward slightly, sandwiching an ink ribbon between the character and the paper, as in a typewriter. One advantage of this arrangement over that of a typewriter is that different wheels may be inserted to produce different typefaces.
- david lloyd george — David, 1st Earl of Dwyfor [doo-vawr] /ˈdu vɔr/ (Show IPA), 1863–1945, British statesman: prime minister 1916–22.
- decachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) The fully chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyl containing ten chlorine atoms.
- deferred liability — income received in advance and carried forward as a liability until the associated goods, services, or benefits are delivered
- depository library — a library designated by law to receive without charge all or a selection of the official publications of a government.
- developing country — a nonindustrialized poor country that is seeking to develop its resources by industrialization
- dictionary catalog — a library catalog having all its entries, including authors, titles, subjects, etc., in one general alphabetical sequence.
- dietary supplement — a substance taken in addition to what you eat in order to promote health
- diethylstilbestrol — a nonsteroidal synthetic estrogen, C 18 H 20 O 2 , used in medicine chiefly in the treatment of menopausal symptoms and in animal feeds for chemical caponization: formerly used during pregnancy for the prevention of miscarriage but discontinued owing to its association with an increased risk of vaginal and cervical cancers in women having had fetal exposure. Abbreviation: DES.
- dihydrotachysterol — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble sterol, C 28 H 46 O, derived from ergosterol: used chiefly in the treatment of hypoparathyroidism.
- dimethyltryptamine — a hallucinogenic drug, C 12 H 16 N 2 , with an action of short duration. Abbreviation: DMT.
- diphosphoglycerate — an ester of phosphoric acid and glyceric acid that occurs in the blood and that promotes the release of hemoglobin-bound oxygen.
- discourse analysis — the study of the rules or patterns characterizing units of connected speech or writing longer than a sentence.
- disorderly conduct — any of various petty misdemeanors, generally including nuisances, breaches of the peace, offensive or immoral conduct in public, etc.
- display postscript — An extended form of PostScript permitting its interactive use with bitmap displays.
- disproportionality — not in proportion; disproportionate.
- disproportionately — not proportionate; out of proportion, as in size or number.
- dry-powder inhaler — A dry-powder inhaler is a device that delivers medication to the lungs in the form of a dry powder.
- 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)
- electricity strike — a time when workers at an electricity company stop supplying power as a protest at working conditions
- electrocyclization — (organic chemistry) an electrocyclic reaction.
- emotional literacy — the ability to deal with one's emotions and recognize their causes
- employment service — (in the United States) a government department established to collect and supply to the unemployed information about job vacancies and to employers information about availability of prospective workers
- evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
- family-tree theory — a theory that describes language change in terms of genetically related languages developing in successive splits from a common parent language, such as Indo-European, as depicted by a family tree diagram.
- fire in your belly — If you say that someone has fire in their belly, you are expressing approval of them because they are energetic, enthusiastic, and have very strong feelings.
- fissure of sylvius — lateral fissure.
- fragile x syndrome — a widespread form of mental retardation caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome.
- fragile-x syndrome — an inherited condition characterized by learning disability: affected individuals have an X-chromosome that is easily damaged under certain conditions
- general relativity — the state or fact of being relative.
- glyceryl trioleate — olein.
- golden opportunity — perfect chance
- graduated cylinder — a narrow, cylindrical container marked with horizontal lines to represent units of measurement and used to precisely measure the volume of liquids.
- ha ha only serious — (SF fandom, originally as mutation of HHOK, "Ha Ha Only Kidding") A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the flavour of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. The Jargon File contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a wannabee, or in larval stage. For further enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also AI koan.
- 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.
- hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
- 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.
- hilary of poitiers — Saint, a.d. c300–368, French bishop and theologian.
- historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
- homeowner's policy — a form of home insurance that provides compensation for damage, loss, or injury of property, personal belongings, or persons due to fire, theft, accidents, etc.