23-letter words containing o, d, a, l
- higher national diploma — a work-related higher education qualification, taking two years full-time.
- hold on like grim death — to hold very firmly or resolutely
- hollerithabetical order — (algorithm) Sorted into the order a standard Hollerith card sorting machine produces, with special characters interleaved within the alphabet.
- hook-and-ladder company — a company of firefighters equipped with a hook-and-ladder truck.
- hydrochlorofluorocarbon — Any of a class of inert compounds of carbon, hydrogen, hydrocarbons, chlorine, and fluorine, used in place of chlorofluorocarbons as being somewhat less destructive to the ozone layer.
- identification bracelet — a bracelet, usually of metal links, having an identification plate for the name of the wearer.
- in a world of one's own — If you say that someone is in a world of their own, you mean that they seem not to notice other people or the things going on around them.
- in sack cloth and ashes — sacking.
- industrial psychologist — a person who studies human behaviour and cognitive processes in relation to the working environment
- integrated fire control — an electronic system that locates and tracks a target, computes the data, and employs a weapon to destroy it.
- intermediate technology — technology which combines sophisticated ideas with cheap and readily available materials, esp for use in developing countries
- international date line — the line approximately following the 180° meridian from Greenwich on the east side of which the date is one day earlier than on the west
- juan rodriguez cabrillo — Juan Rodríguez [rod-ree-ges] /rɒdˈri gɛs/ (Show IPA), (Joao Rodrigues Cabrilho) 1499?–1543, Spanish explorer, born in Portugal: discovered California.
- juvenile-onset diabetes — diabetes (def 3).
- lackland air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW central Texas, SW of San Antonio.
- lady chatterley's lover — a novel (1928) by D. H. Lawrence.
- lead replacement petrol — a less toxic fuel introduced in 2000 for cars requiring leaded petrol
- leave no stone unturned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
- lieutenant junior grade — a commissioned officer ranking above an ensign and below a lieutenant.
- liquefied petroleum gas — a mixture of various petroleum gases, esp propane and butane, stored as a liquid under pressure and used as an engine fuel
- locally euclidean space — a topological space in which each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open set in a Euclidean space of specified dimension.
- lock, stock, and barrel — a device for securing a door, gate, lid, drawer, or the like in position when closed, consisting of a bolt or system of bolts propelled and withdrawn by a mechanism operated by a key, dial, etc.
- long-horned grasshopper — any of numerous insects of the family Tettigoniidae, having long, threadlike antennae and well-developed stridulating organs on the forewings of the male.
- look down one's nose at — to smell or sniff.
- lossy audio compression — (audio, compression) Any audio compression algorithm which does not retain every bit of data but only reproduces a signal that sounds more or less like the original. Examples are MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC.
- made out of whole cloth — completely fictitious or false; made up
- magnetohydrodynamically — In a magnetohydrodynamic way.
- mediated generalization — generalization (def 4c).
- mediated-generalization — the act or process of generalizing.
- multimedia compact disc — (storage) (MMCD) A CD-ROM standard for storing 4.7 GB of data including video. MMCD is being developed by a large numer of computer manufacturers and is expected to be shipped in late 1996 or early 1997. Initially it will be aimed at the consumer market, then perhaps in CD-ROM format for computers, and maybe later on erasble CD.
- nondisclosure agreement — a legal contract in which one or more parties agree to keep information, as a trade secret, confidential and protected for a specific amount of time. Abbreviation: NDA.
- nonessential amino acid — an amino acid that can be synthesized in the body
- o'reilly and associates — The leading publisher of information on the Internet, Unix, the X Window System and other open systems. They also provide the Global Network Navigator service.
- on-line data processing — the storing or processing of data on a computer using the internet
- order of military merit — an order awarded to members of the Canadian Forces for conspicuous merit; established in 1972
- ordinary life insurance — life insurance with premiums paid throughout the lifetime of the insured.
- parasexual reproduction — reproduction by recombination of genes from genetically dissimilar nuclei within binucleate or multinucleate cells, as in filamentous fungi.
- parkinson's law of data — "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars also tends to double about once every 12 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.
- parliamentary democracy — a system of government in which people elect representatives to a parliament to make laws, for example Canada and the UK
- partial differentiation — the process of finding one of the partial derivatives of a function of several variables.
- past one's sell-by date — If you say that someone or something is past their sell-by date, you mean they are no longer effective, interesting, or useful.
- patient confidentiality — the law that a doctor or medical practitioner cannot reveal anything said to them by their patients during consultation or treatment
- pentagonal dodecahedron — pyritohedron.
- performance-related pay — salary based on individual assessment
- peroxymonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- pest control department — the local government department responsible for controlling such pests as rats and mice
- philadelphia pepper pot — pepper pot (def 1).
- photoelectric magnitude — the magnitude of a star determined using a photometer plus a filter to select light or other radiation of the desired wavelength
- physical memory address — physical address
- plain old documentation — (text) (pod, occasionally "POD") A simple markup language used to embed documentation, literate programming-style, in Perl programs. Pod readers and converters are part of the standard Perl distribution and the documentation provided with Perl is all in pod format.