17-letter words containing m, o, n, l
- harmonic interval — an intervening period of time: an interval of 50 years.
- heavy mineral oil — a colorless, oily, almost tasteless, water-insoluble liquid, usually of either a standard light density (light mineral oil) or a standard heavy density (heavy mineral oil) consisting of mixtures of hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum by distillation: used chiefly as a lubricant, in the manufacture of cosmetics, and in medicine as a laxative.
- helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- ho chi minh trail — a network of jungle paths winding from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam, used as a military route by North Vietnam to supply the Vietcong during the Vietnam War.
- hold sb to ransom — If you say that someone is holding you to ransom in British English, or holding you for ransom in American English, you mean that they are using their power to try to force you to do something which you do not want to do.
- holistic medicine — incorporating the concept of holism, or the idea that the whole is more than merely the sum of its parts, in theory or practice: holistic psychology.
- hollerith, herman — Herman Hollerith
- holy roman empire — a Germanic empire located chiefly in central Europe that began with the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in a.d. 800 (or, according to some historians, with the coronation of Otto the Great, king of Germany, in a.d. 962) and ended with the renunciation of the Roman imperial title by Francis II in 1806, and was regarded theoretically as the continuation of the Western Empire and as the temporal form of a universal dominion whose spiritual head was the pope.
- homeland security — national defence
- homo floresiensis — a possible species of very small, primitive human: its fossils were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.
- homolytic fission — the dissociation of a molecule into two neutral fragments
- homovanillic acid — the end product of dopamine metabolism, C 9 H 10 O 4 , found in human urine.
- honorable mention — a citation conferred on a contestant, exhibit, etc., having exceptional merit though not winning a top honor or prize.
- household ammonia — diluted ammonia, often having a small quantity of detergent, used in the home for cleaning.
- hurler's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by physical deformity and mental deficiency
- hydrothermal vent — an opening on the floor of the sea from which hot, mineral-rich solutions issue. Compare vent1 (def 2).
- hyperalimentation — overfeeding.
- hypodermic needle — a hollow needle used to inject solutions subcutaneously.
- imitation doublet — a doublet formed entirely of glass.
- immunofluorescent — Of, pertaining to, or using immunofluorescence.
- impersonalization — to make impersonal: The dial system impersonalized the telephone.
- implicit function — See at implicit (def 4).
- implosion therapy — a form of behavior therapy involving intensive recollection and review of anxiety-producing situations or events in a patient's life in an attempt to develop more appropriate responses to similar situations in the future.
- impressionability — easily impressed or influenced; susceptible: an impressionable youngster.
- improper integral — Also called infinite integral. a definite integral in which one or both of the limits of integration is infinite.
- improvisationally — In an improvisational way.
- inclusion complex — a solid solution in which molecules of one compound occupy places in the crystal lattice of another compound. Compare adduct (def 2).
- income inequality — a situation in which there is great disparity in income within a society
- incommunicability — incapable of being communicated, imparted, shared, etc.
- incompatibilities — not compatible; unable to exist together in harmony: She asked for a divorce because they were utterly incompatible.
- incomplete flower — a flower without one or more of the normal parts, as carpels, sepals, petals, pistils, or stamens.
- incomprehensively — In an incomprehensive manner.
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- inertial platform — self-contained navigational devices used in inertial guidance, along with their mounting.
- injection molding — a method of forming thermoplastic or thermoset plastic, metal, or ceramic material by injection into a closed mold.
- insertion element — a section of DNA that is capable of becoming inserted into another chromosome
- insurmountability — incapable of being surmounted, passed over, or overcome; insuperable: an insurmountable obstacle.
- intercolumniation — the space between two adjacent columns, usually the clear space between the lower parts of the shafts.
- intergovernmental — involving two or more governments or levels of government.
- intersectionalism — The study of minorities within minorities, or intersections between minorities; specifically, the study of the interactions of multiple systems of oppression or discrimination.
- intragovernmental — Within a government.
- invisible imports — imports of services rather than goods
- irrational number — a number that cannot be exactly expressed as a ratio of two integers.
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- know only by name — to be familiar with the name of but not know personally
- knowledge economy — an economy in which information services are dominant as an area of growth
- kyoto common lisp — (language) (KCL) An implementation of Common Lisp by T. Yuasa <[email protected]> and M. Hagiya <[email protected]>, written in C to run under Unix-like operating systems. KCL is compiled to ANSI C. It conforms to Common Lisp as described in Guy Steele's book and is available under a licence agreement. E-mail: <[email protected]> (bug reports). Mailing list: [email protected], [email protected]
- ladder tournament — a tournament in which the entrants are listed by name and rank, advancement being by means of challenging and defeating an entrant ranked one or two places higher.
- lagrange's method — a procedure for finding maximum and minimum values of a function of several variables when the variables are restricted by additional conditions.