0%

17-letter words containing o, l, d, n

  • ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
  • exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
  • exceptional child — a gifted child
  • explosion welding — the welding of two parts forced together by a controlled explosion
  • fall on deaf ears — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
  • falling diphthong — a diphthong in which the first of the two apparent vocalic elements is of greater stress or sonority and the second is of lesser stress or sonority, as in (ī), (ou), (oi), etc.
  • fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
  • fendalton tractor — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
  • flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
  • floating dry dock — a dock that floats and can be lowered in the water for the entrance of a ship, and then raised for use as a dry dock
  • flowering dogwood — a North American dogwood tree, Cornus florida, having small greenish flowers in the spring, surrounded by white or pink bracts that resemble petals: the state flower and the state tree of Virginia.
  • fluid lubrication — lubrication in which bearing surfaces are separated by an oil film sustained by the motion of the parts
  • folie de grandeur — a delusion of grandeur; megalomania.
  • follow the hounds — to hunt a fox, etc. on horseback with hounds
  • fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
  • fort leonard wood — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in SW Missouri, SW of Rolla.
  • foucault pendulum — a pendulum that demonstrates the rotation of the earth by exhibiting an apparent change in its plane of oscillation.
  • fractal dimension — (mathematics)   A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
  • french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
  • front-wheel drive — a drive system in which engine power is transmitted through the front wheels only.
  • full load current — A full load current is the largest current that a motor or other device is designed to carry under particular conditions.
  • full-motion video — (video)   (FMV) Any kind of video that is theoretically capable of changing the entire content on the screen fast enough that the transitions are not obvious to the human eye, i.e. about 24 times a second or more. In practise most video encoding relies on the fact that in most video there is relatively little change from one frame to the next. This allows for compression of the video data. The term is used, chiefly in computer games, in contrast to techniques such as the use of sprites that move against a more-or-less fixed background.
  • galapagos islands — a group of 15 islands in the Pacific west of Ecuador, of which they form a province: discovered (1535) by the Spanish; main settlement on San Cristóbal. Pop: 18 640 (2001). Area: 7844 sq km (3028 sq miles)
  • garden heliotrope — the common valerian, Valeriana officinalis, especially when cultivated as an ornamental.
  • general admission — an admission charge for unreserved seats at a theatrical performance, sports event, etc.
  • general knowledge — commonly known facts
  • generalized other — an individual's internalized impression of societal norms and expectations.
  • glycosphingolipid — (biochemistry) a lipid that contains at least one monosaccharide unit and either a sphingoid or a ceramide.
  • gold export point — an exchange rate at which it is as cheap to settle international accounts by exporting gold bullion as by buying bills of exchange
  • gold import point — an exchange rate at which it is as cheap to settle international accounts by importing gold bullion as by selling bills of exchange
  • goldbeater's skin — the prepared outside membrane of the large intestine of the ox, used by goldbeaters to lay between the leaves of the metal while they beat it into gold leaf.
  • golden alexanders — a plant, Zizia aurea, of the parsley family, native to eastern North America, having compound leaves and umbels of yellow flowers.
  • golden hand-shake — a special incentive, as generous severance pay, given to an older employee as an inducement to elect early retirement.
  • gomez de la serna — Ramón [rah-mawn] /rɑˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), ("Ramón") 1888–1963, Spanish novelist, dramatist, biographer, and critic.
  • grand union canal — a canal in S England linking London and the Midlands: opened in 1801
  • grandfather clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
  • grandmother clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
  • gridiron pendulum — a clock pendulum having, as part of its shaft, an arrangement of brass and steel rods having different coefficients of expansion, such that the pendulum has the same length at any temperature.
  • ground angle shot — a photograph or film shot in which the lens is near the ground, usually pointing up somewhat
  • gulf war syndrome — a group of symptoms occurring in some Gulf War veterans, most commonly including headache and memory loss, muscle pain, skin disorders, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and gastrointestinal and respiratory ailments, possibly caused by exposure to chemical weapons, vaccines, infectious diseases, or other factors.
  • gunboat diplomacy — diplomatic relations involving the use or threat of military force, especially by a powerful nation against a weaker one.
  • haitian solenodon — a rare shrewlike nocturnal mammal of the Caribbean, Solenodon paradoxus, having a long hairless tail and an elongated snout: family Solenodontidae, order Insectivora (insectivores)
  • half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels
  • hall of residence — Halls of residence are buildings with rooms or flats, usually built by universities or colleges, in which students live during the term.
  • haroun-al-raschid — Harun al-Rashid.
  • helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
  • henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
  • hillel foundation — a national organization, founded in 1924 by the B'nai B'rith, that institutes and administers programs designed to enrich the religious, cultural, and social life of Jewish college students.
  • hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
  • hold one's end up — the last part or extremity, lengthwise, of anything that is longer than it is wide or broad: the end of a street; the end of a rope.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?