18-letter words containing n, i, c, o, l, t
- hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
- ignition interlock — interlock (def 10).
- immunohistological — the microscopic study of tissues with the aid of antibodies that bind to tissue components and reveal their presence.
- 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.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- inconsequentiality — of little or no importance; insignificant; trivial.
- independent school — (in Britain) a school that is neither financed nor controlled by the government or local authorities
- indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
- inductive coupling — the coupling between two electric circuits through inductances linked by a common changing magnetic field.
- inductive relation — A relation R between domains D and E is inductive if for all chains d1 .. dn in D and e1 .. en in E,
- indus civilization — an ancient civilization that flourished in the Indus River valley, from about 2500 to 1500 b.c.: extensive archaeological excavations at the main sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in Pakistan.
- initial commission — Initial commission is commission that is paid to someone who sells or recommends a financial product for the first time.
- instruction manual — how-to, usage guide
- intelligence corps — a military department that gathers and analyzes information
- intensional object — the object of a propositional attitude that may or may not exist, as in Robert is dreaming of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This must be an intensional (or opaque) context, for otherwise, since there is no pot of gold, Robert would be dreaming of nothing
- intercartilaginous — (anatomy) Within cartilage.
- internal secretion — a secretion, esp a hormone, that is absorbed directly into the blood
- international code — a code used at sea by the navies of certain nations, using a series of flags representing digits from zero through nine.
- involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
- italian corn salad — a southern European plant, Valerianella eriocarpa, of the valerian family, having edible, spoon-shaped, hairy leaves and dense clusters of pale-blue flowers.
- italian provincial — designating or of a style of rural, Italian furniture of the 18th and 19th cent., with straight lines and simple decoration, usually of fruitwood or mahogany
- jacobite rebellion — the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1715 led by James Francis Edward Stuart
- jewel in the crown — the most valuable, esteemed, or successful person or thing of a number
- job classification — an arrangement of different types of employment within a company or industry, according to the skill, experience, or training required.
- joint consultation — a formal system of communication between the management of an organization and the employees' representatives used prior to taking decisions affecting the workforce, usually effected through a joint consultative committee
- killer application — a highly innovative, very powerful, or extremely useful computer application; esp one sufficiently important as to justify purchase of the equipment or software
- king of the castle — most powerful figure
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
- lactose intolerant — cannot digest milk
- lake pontchartrain — a shallow lagoon in SE Louisiana, linked with the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow channel, the Rigolets: resort and fishing centre. Area: 1620 sq km (625 sq miles)
- lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
- law of mass action — the statement that the rate of a chemical reaction is proportional to the concentrations of the reacting substances.
- lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
- lieutenant colonel — a commissioned officer ranking next below a colonel and next above a major.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- line one's pockets — to put into one's pocket: to pocket one's keys.
- linear accelerator — an accelerator in which particles are propelled in straight paths by the use of alternating electric voltages that are timed in such a way that the particles receive increasing increments of energy.
- 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]).
- local examinations — (in the UK) any of various examinations, such as the GCE, set by university boards and conducted in local centres, schools, etc
- locally finite set — a collection of sets in a topological space in which each point of the space has a neighborhood that intersects a finite number of sets of the collection.
- 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.
- long-distance call — phone call: not local area
- 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.
- 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.