20-letter words containing o, c, u, l, a
- frequency modulation — FM.
- frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
- fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
- fulminating compound — a fulminate.
- function application — A function applied to (some of) its arguments. If it is not applied to all its argument then it is a "partial application". Application is usually written in the form f(x) but some languages such as command-line interpreters and many functional languages use juxtaposition: f x. Lisp places the parentheses around the whole application: (f x).
- fundamental constant — a physical constant, such as the gravitational constant or speed of light, that plays a fundamental role in physics and chemistry and usually has an accurately known value
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
- glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- greenwich hour angle — hour angle measured from the meridian of Greenwich, England.
- group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
- guarded horn clauses — (language) (GHC) A parallel dialect of Prolog by K. Ueda in which each clause has a guard. GHC is similar to Parlog. When several clauses match a goal, their guards are evaluated in parallel and the first clause whose guard is found to be true is used and others are rejected. It uses committed-choice nondeterminism. See also FGHC, KL1.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- hierarchical routing — The complex problem of routing on large networks can be simplified by breaking a network into a hierarchy of smaller networks, where each level is responsible for its own routing. The Internet has, basically, three levels: the backbones, the mid-levels, and the stub networks. The backbones know how to route between the mid-levels, the mid-levels know how to route between the sites, and each site (being an autonomous system) knows how to route internally. See also Exterior Gateway Protocol, Interior Gateway Protocol, transit network.
- honeysuckle ornament — anthemion.
- hot under the collar — the part of a shirt, coat, dress, blouse, etc., that encompasses the neckline of the garment and is sewn permanently to it, often so as to fold or roll over.
- household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking
- hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
- industrial sociology — the sociological study of social relationships and social structures in business settings.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- jacopo della quercia — Jacopo Della [yah-kaw-paw del-lah] /ˈyɑ kɔ pɔ ˌdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), 1374?–1438, Italian sculptor.
- james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
- japanese honeysuckle — a climbing honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, introduced into the eastern U.S. from Asia, having fragrant, white flowers that fade to yellow.
- job control language — a language used to construct statements that identify a particular job to be run and specify the job's requirements to the operating system under which it will run. Abbreviation: JCL.
- joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
- judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
- justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
- labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
- lampbrush chromosome — a chromosome with looped projections resembling a brush
- land-office business — a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
- languedoc-roussillon — a region of S France, on the Gulf of Lions: consists of the departments of Lozère, Gard, Hérault, Aude, and Pyrénées-Orientales; mainly mountainous with a coastal plain
- lieutenant commander — a commissioned officer ranking next below a commander and next above a lieutenant.
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- light the touchpaper — to do something that will cause much anger or excitement
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
- logical construction — anything referred to by an incomplete symbol capable of contextual definition.
- lonely hearts column — the part of a newspaper or magazine where lonely hearts ads appear
- longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- lunisolar precession — the principal component of the precession of the equinoxes, produced by the gravitational attraction of the sun and the moon on the equatorial bulge of the earth.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
- manuel avila camacho — Manuel Ávila [mah-nwel ah-vee-lah] /mɑˈnwɛl ˈɑ viˌlɑ/ (Show IPA). Manuel Avila Camacho.
- massachusetts ballot — a ballot on which the candidates, with their party designations, are listed alphabetically in columns under the office for which they were nominated.