18-letter words containing m, e, c, l
- heart-lung machine — a device through which blood is shunted temporarily for oxygenation during surgery, while the heart or a lung is being repaired.
- hebdomadal council — the governing council or senate of Oxford University
- heimlich manoeuvre — a technique in first aid to dislodge a foreign body in a person's windpipe by applying sudden upward pressure on the upper abdomen
- helmholtz function — the thermodynamic function of a system that is equal to its internal energy minus the product of its absolute temperature and entropy: A decrease in the function is equal to the maximum amount of work available during a reversible isothermal process.
- 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.
- honeysuckle family — the plant family Caprifoliaceae, typified by shrubs and woody vines having opposite leaves, clusters of usually flaring, narrow, tubular flowers, and various types of fruit, and including the elder, honeysuckle, snowberry, twinflower, and viburnum.
- htmlcommentbox.com — (web) A service for adding a comment box to any web page, allowing visitors to leave comments and the site owner to review them.
- hyper-metaphorical — a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”. Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def 1).
- hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
- hypermodern school — a style of chess characterized by control of the centre from the flanks
- immunofluorescence — any of various techniques for detecting an antigen or antibody in a sample by coupling its specifically interactive antibody or antigen to a fluorescent compound, mixing with the sample, and observing the reaction under an ultraviolet-light microscope.
- imploded consonant — a consonant which is pronounced with or by implosion
- in complete flower — a flower without one or more of the normal parts, as carpels, sepals, petals, pistils, or stamens.
- in compliance with — in accordance with
- in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
- incidental damages — law: incurred by contract breach
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- incremental backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
- insurance salesman — male: sells insurance
- involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
- isoamyl salicylate — a colorless, sometimes slightly yellow, synthetic oil, C 12 H 16 O 3 , having an orchidlike odor: used in perfumery.
- isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
- johnny-come-lately — a late arrival or participant; newcomer: the Johnny-come-latelies producing space-war films after the trend had ended.
- lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
- lambeth conference — a convention of the bishops of the Anglican communion, held about every 10 years at Lambeth Palace to confer but not to define doctrine or to legislate on ecclesiastical matters.
- launching ceremony — a ceremony that celebrates the launch of a ship for the first time into the water
- lean manufacturing — efficiency in the production of goods
- light displacement — the weight of a ship with all its permanent equipment, excluding the weight of cargo, persons, ballast, dunnage, and fuel, but usually including the weight of permanent ballast and water used to operate steam machinery.
- lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
- limburger (cheese) — a semisoft cheese of whole milk, with a strong odor and flavor, made originally in Limburg, Belgium
- limiting adjective — (in English and some other languages) one of a small group of adjectives that modify the nouns to which they are applied by restricting rather than describing or qualifying. This, some, and certain are limiting adjectives.
- linear combination — a sum of products of each quantity times a constant: The expression aX + bY + cZ is a linear combination of X, Y, and Z, where a, b, and c are constants.
- list comprehension — (functional programming) An expression in a functional language denoting the results of some operation on (selected) elements of one or more lists. An example in Haskell: This returns all pairs of numbers (x,y) where x and y are elements of the list 1, 2, ..., 10, y <= x and their sum is less than 10. A list comprehension is simply "syntactic sugar" for a combination of applications of the functions, concat, map and filter. For instance the above example could be written: The term "list comprehension" appears in the references below. The earliest reference to the notation is in Rod Burstall and John Darlington's description of their language, NPL. David Turner subsequently adopted this notation in his languages SASL, KRC and Miranda, where he has called them "ZF expressions", set abstractions and list abstractions (in his 1985 FPCA paper [Miranda: A Non-Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types]).
- literary criticism — study and review of literature
- local examinations — (in the UK) any of various examinations, such as the GCE, set by university boards and conducted in local centres, schools, etc
- locked-in syndrome — a condition in which a person is conscious but unable to move any part of the body except the eyes: results from damage to the brainstem
- logical complement — (logic) In Boolean algebra, the logical complement or negation of a Boolean value is the opposite value, given by the following truth table: A | -A --+--- T | F F | T -A is also written as A with a bar over it or with a small vertical line hanging from the right-hand end of the "-" (LaTeX \neg) or as A'. In the C programming language, it is !A and in digital circuit design, /A.
- loschmidt's number — the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure, equal to 2.687 × 10 19.
- luminous emittance — luminous flux emitted per unit area.
- maclaurin's series — an infinite sum giving the value of a function f(x) in terms of the derivatives of the function evaluated at zero: f(x) = f(0) + (f′(0)x)/1! + (f″(0)x2)/2! + …
- magnesium silicate — a white powder, 3MgSiO 3 ⋅5H 2 O, with variable hydration, insoluble in water or alcohol, used as a rubber filler, a bleaching agent, an odor absorbent, and in the manufacture of paints and resins.
- magnetic amplifier — an amplifier that applies the input signal to a primary winding and feeds an alternating current to a secondary winding where this current is modulated by the variations in the primary winding.
- magnetic potential — a scalar quantity, analogous to the electric potential, defined at each point in a given magnetic field to be equal to the work done in bringing a unit north pole from infinity to the point.
- magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
- magnetoelectricity — electricity developed by the action of magnets.
- magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
- make allowance for — the act of allowing.
- maksutov telescope — a reflecting telescope in which coma and spherical aberration are reduced to a minimum by a combination of a spherical mirror and a meniscus lens placed inside the radius of curvature of the mirror.
- malicious mischief — willful destruction of personal property motivated by ill will or resentment toward its owner or possessor.
- marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.