12-letter words containing o, a, k, l
- booklet pane — Philately. any of a number of panes or small pages of postage stamps, stapled together into a booklet for the convenience of users.
- brooks's law — (programming) "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
- brown hackle — an artificial fly having a peacock herl body, golden tag and tail, and brown hackle.
- bullock cart — a cart pulled by one or two bullocks
- cape-lookout — Cape, a sandy reef in the Outer Banks, off E North Carolina, SW of Cape Hatteras: lighthouse.
- capitol peak — a mountain in W central Colorado, in the Elk range of the Rocky Mountains. 14,130 feet (4310 meters).
- carbon black — a black finely divided form of amorphous carbon produced by incomplete combustion of natural gas or petroleum: used to reinforce rubber and in the manufacture of pigments and ink
- cavity block — a precast concrete block that contains a cavity or cavities
- chain locker — a compartment where the chain or cable of an anchor is stowed when the anchor is raised.
- choke collar — a training collar for a dog, that tightens when the dog strains at the leash
- chook raffle — a raffle for which the main prize is a roast chicken
- closed-stack — having access to the stacks limited to the staff of the library or to a limited group of library users.
- clothes rack — a framework for holding or displaying clothes in a shop
- cocktail bar — a bar which serves cocktails
- college park — a city in N Georgia.
- cook islands — a group of islands in the SW Pacific, an overseas territory of New Zealand: consists of the Lower Cooks and the Northern Cooks Capital: Avarua, on Rarotonga. Pop: 10 447 (2013 est). Area: 234 sq km (90 sq miles)
- cook-general — (formerly, esp in the 1920s and '30s) a domestic servant who did cooking and housework
- cooking salt — a type of salt used in cooking
- cooling rack — a wire frame used for cooling food on
- crack willow — a species of commonly grown willow, Salix fragilis, with branches that snap easily
- cryoplankton — minute organisms, esp algae, living in ice, snow, or icy water
- cutwork lace — point coupé (def 2).
- cutwork-lace — Also called cutwork. a process for producing lace in which predetermined threads in the ground material are cut and removed in order to provide open areas for the insertion of ornamental patterns.
- cycloalkanes — Cycloalkanes are molecules which contain only carbon-hydrogen bonds, with the carbon atoms joined in a ring.
- cytoskeletal — of or relating to a cytoskeleton
- czechoslovak — Czechoslovak means belonging or relating to the former state of Czechoslovakia.
- dak bungalow — (in India, formerly) a house where travellers on a dak route could be accommodated
- dasher block — a block at the end of a yard or gaff for supporting a signal or ensign halyard.
- dockwalloper — longshoreman
- donald knuth — (person) Donald E. Knuth, the author of the TeX document formatting system, Metafont its font-design program and the 3 volume computer science "Bible" of algorithms, "The Art of Computer Programming". Knuth suggested the name "Backus-Naur Form" and was also involved in the SOL simulation language, and developed the WEB literate programming system. See also MIX, Turingol.
- double track — two railways side by side, typically for traffic in two directions
- duke of alba — Duke of, Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo.
- east suffolk — a former administrative division of Suffolk county, in E England.
- endoskeletal — (anatomy) Of or pertaining to an internal skeleton, usually of bone (an endoskeleton).
- eskimo-aleut — (designating or of) a family of languages including Aleut and the Eskimo languages
- fall back on — to drop or descend under the force of gravity, as to a lower place through loss or lack of support.
- floorwalkers — Plural form of floorwalker.
- florida keys — chain of small islands extending southwest from the S tip of Fla.
- flour shaker — a container, often with a perforated top, from which flour is shaken
- formula milk — An artificial substitute for breast milk intended for feeding infants. It can come in powdered form to be mixed with water or in instant liquid form.
- fort pulaski — Count Casimir [kaz-uh-meer] /ˈkæz əˌmɪər/ (Show IPA), 1748–79, Polish patriot; general in the American Revolutionary army.
- frankalmoign — a form of tenure by which religious bodies held lands, esp on condition of praying for the soul of the donor
- glatt kosher — prepared for eating according to the dietary laws followed by Hasidic Jews, which differ somewhat from those followed by other observers of kashruth: glatt kosher meat.
- glossy snake — a nocturnal burrowing snake, Arizona elegans, of the western U.S. and northern Mexico, having smooth, glistening scales of tan with brown blotches.
- go walkabout — to wander through the bush
- gondola back — a chair or couch back curving forward and downward to form arms.
- haliplankton — plankton living in sea water
- hammarskjold — Dag Hjalmar [dahg yahl-mahr] /dɑg ˈyɑl mɑr/ (Show IPA), 1905–61, Swedish statesman: Secretary General of the United Nations 1953–61; Nobel Peace Prize 1961.
- harold stark — Harold Raynsford [reynz-ferd] /ˈreɪnz fərd/ (Show IPA), 1880–1972, U.S. admiral.
- hello packet — (networking, communications) An OSPF packet sent periodically on each network interface, real or virtual, to discover and test connections to neighbours. Hello packets are multicast on physical networks capable of multicasting or broadcasting to enable dynamic router discovery. They include the parameters that routers connected to a common network must agree on. Hello packets increase network resilience by, e.g., allowing a router to establish a secondary connection when a primary connection fails.