18-letter words containing o, k, l, a
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- known lazy bastard — (abuse) (KLB) A term, used among technical support staff, for a user who repeatedly asks for help with problems whose solutions are clearly explained in the documentation, and persists in doing so after having been told to RTFM. KLBs are singled out for special treatment (i.e. ridicule), especially if they have been heard to say "It's so boring to read the manual! Why don't you just tell me?". The deepest pit in Hell is reserved for KLBs whose questions reveal total ignorance of the basic concepts (e.g., "How do I make a font in Excel?", "Where do I turn on my RAM?"), and who refuse to accept that their questions are neither simple nor well-formed.
- komsomolsk-on-amur — city in SE Russia, on the Amur River: pop. 309,000
- krause's corpuscle — any of numerous encapsulated nerve endings occurring in the skin and mucous membranes, functioning as sensory cold receptors.
- 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)
- like a house afire — a building in which people live; residence for human beings.
- local area network — a system for linking private telecommunications equipment, as in a building or cluster of buildings.
- long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
- look the other way — look in the opposite direction
- looking-glass self — the self-image an individual forms by imagining what others think of his or her behavior and appearance.
- lower klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- make a beeline for — head directly towards
- make a meal of sth — If you think someone is taking more time and energy to do something than is necessary, you can say that they are making a meal of it.
- make allowance for — the act of allowing.
- maksutov telescope — a reflecting telescope in which coma and spherical aberration are reduced to a minimum by a combination of a spherical mirror and a meniscus lens placed inside the radius of curvature of the mirror.
- maximum likelihood — greatest probability
- multicast backbone — (MBONE) A virtual network on top of the Internet which supports routing of IP multicast packets, intended for multimedia transmission. MBONE gives public access desktop video communications. The quality is poor with only 3-5 frames per second instead of the 30 frames per second of commercial television. Its advantage is that it avoids all telecommunications costs normally associated with teleconferencing. An interesting innovation is the use of MBONE for audio communications and an electronic "whiteboard" where the computer screen becomes a shared workspace where two physically remote parties can draw on and edit shared documents in real-time.
- norwegian elkhound — one of a breed of dogs having a short, compact body, short, pointed ears, and a thick, gray coat, raised originally in Norway for hunting elk and other game.
- not take kindly to — not welcome
- now you're talking — at last you're saying something agreeable
- oak-leaf hydrangea — a shrub, Hydrangea quercifolia, of the southeastern U.S., having lobed leaves and pyramidal clusters of white flowers.
- open-collar worker — (job) Someone who works at home or telecommutes.
- optical disk drive — (hardware) (Or "optical disc drive", "optical storage") A generic term for any device that reads and/or writes optical media, i.e. compact discs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray discs or future media that uses light (from a small laser) to read data off a removable, rotating disk. At least one such drive is commonly installed in most personal computers to allow them to play and/or record audio and video media and load and store data such as program installers. The floppy disk has been replaced by optical media due to its vastly greater capacity, e.g. 50,000 megabytes for a dual-layer blu-ray disc compared with 1.5 megabytes for a floppy (over 30,000 times as much).
- optical soundtrack — the final soundtrack on a motion picture, which appears as a band of black and white serrations along a strip of film to the left of the composite print. Light is shined through the serrations and is converted to audible sound.
- oriental cockroach — a dark-brown cockroach, Blatta orientalis, thought to have originated in Asia but now nearly cosmopolitan in distribution.
- peak-to-peak value — Peak-to-peak value is the maximum voltage change occurring during one cycle of alternating voltage or current.
- people trafficking — the practice of bringing immigrants into a country illegally
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
- przewalski's horse — a wild horse, Equus caballus przevalskii, chiefly of Mongolia and Sinkiang, characterized by light yellow coloring and a stiff, upright black mane with no forelock: the only remaining breed of wild horse, it is now endangered and chiefly maintained in zoos.
- put the clock back — to regress
- random walk theory — the theory that the future movement of share prices does not reflect past movements and therefore will not follow a discernible pattern
- relative major key — a major key that has the same key signature as a minor key, but a different tonic
- relative minor key — a minor key that has the same key signature as a major key, but a different tonic
- right-to-work laws — a state law making it illegal to refuse employment to a person for the sole reason that he or she is not a union member.
- schofield barracks — a town on central Oahu, in central Hawaii.
- scottish blackface — a common breed of hardy mountain sheep having horns and a black face, kept chiefly on the mainland of Scotland
- slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
- software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
- spackling compound — spackle
- speak for yourself — If you say 'Speak for yourself' when someone has said something, you mean that what they have said is only their opinion or applies only to them.
- stinking chamomile — mayweed.
- stokely carmichael — Hoagland Howard [hohg-luh nd] /ˈhoʊg lənd/ (Show IPA), ("Hoagy") 1899–1981, U.S. songwriter and musician.
- take it on the lam — a hasty escape; flight.
- take to one's legs — to run away
- talk of the devil! — used when an absent person who has been the subject of conversation appears
- task control block — (architecture) An MVS control block used to communicate information about tasks within an address space that are connected to an MVS subsystem such as MQSeries for MVS/ESA or CICS.
- technical knockout — the termination of a bout by the referee when it is the judgment of the attending physician, a boxer's seconds, or the referee that a boxer cannot continue fighting without sustaining severe or disabling injury. Abbreviation: TKO, T.K.O.