17-letter words containing o, l, i, u
- island of the sun — Sicily: the island where Helius kept his oxen.
- it's your funeral — If someone says to you 'It's your funeral', they think your decision or your actions will have bad consequences for you, but they are unwilling to interfere.
- italian greyhound — one of an Italian breed of toy dogs resembling a greyhound.
- joachim du bellay — Joachim [French zhaw-a-keem] /French ʒɔ aˈkim/ (Show IPA), Bellay, Joachim du.
- john of salisbury — c1115–80, English prelate and scholar.
- julian of norwich — ?1342–?1413, English mystic and anchoress: best known for the Revelations of Divine Love describing her visions
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- juvenile offender — a child or young person who has been found guilty of some offence, act of vandalism, or antisocial behaviour before a juvenile court
- l'hospital's rule — the theorem that for the quotient of two functions satisfying certain conditions on a given closed interval, each having infinite limit or zero as limit at a given point, the limit of the quotient at the given point is equal to the limit of the quotient of the derivatives of each function.
- la perouse strait — a strait between S Sakhalin Island, Russia and N Hokkaido Island, Japan connecting the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. 25 miles (40 km) wide.
- lago de nicaragua — Spanish name of Lake Nicaragua.
- lambdoidal suture — the lambda-shaped seam or line of joining between the occipital and two parietal bones at the back part of the skull.
- lame-duck session — (formerly) the December to March session of those members of the U.S. Congress who were defeated for reelection the previous November.
- langmuir isotherm — A Langmuir isotherm is a classical relationship between the concentrations of a solid and a fluid, used to describe a state of no change in the sorption process.
- last-in first-out — stack
- league of nations — an international organization to promote world peace and cooperation that was created by the Treaty of Versailles (1919): dissolved April 1946.
- lebanon mountains — a mountain range extending the length of Lebanon, in the central part. Highest peak, 10,049 feet (3063 meters).
- legendre equation — a differential equation of the form (1− x 2) d2y/dx2 − 2 xdy/dx + a (a + 1) y = 0, where a is an arbitrary constant.
- leibniz mountains — a mountain range on the SW limb of the moon, containing the highest peaks (10 000 metres) on the moon
- leizhou peninsula — a peninsula of SE China, in SW Guangdong province, separated from Hainan Island by Hainan Strait
- liability account — A liability account is an account recording a company's liabilities.
- liberal education — an education based primarily on the liberal arts, emphasizing the development of intellectual abilities as opposed to the acquisition of professional skills.
- librocubicularist — (rare) A person who reads in bed.
- lick one's wounds — an injury, usually involving division of tissue or rupture of the integument or mucous membrane, due to external violence or some mechanical agency rather than disease.
- lighthouse keeper — a person who mans a lighthouse and makes sure that the light is working properly
- limestone lettuce — a variety of lettuce derived from Bibb lettuce.
- limousine liberal — a wealthy left-wing person
- line of induction — (formerly) a line of force in a magnetic field.
- line of longitude — an imaginary line on a globe, map, etc, indicating longitude
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
- liquidity cushion — a reserve fund of assets held by a company or person
- literary executor — a person entrusted with the publishable works and other papers of a deceased author.
- lithium carbonate — a colorless crystalline compound, Li 2 CO 3 , slightly soluble in water: used in ceramic and porcelain glazes, pharmaceuticals, and luminescent paints.
- lithium hydroxide — a white, crystalline, water-soluble compound, LiOH, used to absorb carbon dioxide, especially in spacesuits.
- little blue heron — a small heron, Egretta caerulea, of the warmer parts of the Western Hemisphere, having bluish-gray plumage.
- loco supra citato — l.s.c.
- long island sound — an arm of the Atlantic between Connecticut and Long Island. 90 miles (145 km) long.
- longitudinal wave — a wave in which the direction of displacement is the same as the direction of propagation, as a sound wave.
- louisiana tanager — western tanager.
- low-hanging fruit — the fruit that grows low on a tree and is therefore easy to reach
- luminous efficacy — the quotient of the luminous flux of a radiation and its corresponding radiant flux
- luminous exitance — the ability of a surface to emit light expressed as the luminous flux per unit area at a specified point on the surface
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- macro-linguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macroevolutionary — Pertaining to, or as a result of macroevolution.
- magellanic clouds — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- manitoulin island — an island in N Lake Huron belonging to Canada. 80 miles (130 km) long.
- many-valued logic — the study of logical systems in which the truth-values that a proposition may have are not restricted to two, representing only truth and falsity
- maxwell equations — equations developed by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) upon which classical electromagnetic theory is based