18-letter words containing o
- lenient evaluation — (reduction) An evaluation strategy, described in [Traub, FPCA 89], under which all redexes are evaluated in parallel except inside the arms of conditionals and inside lambda abstractions. Lenient evaluation is an example of an eager evaluation strategy.
- lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
- lesser whitethroat — an Old World warbler, Sylvia curruca, having a greyish-brown plumage with a white throat and underparts
- let oneself in for — If you say that you did not know what you were letting yourself in for when you decided to do something, you mean you did not realize how difficult, unpleasant, or expensive it was going to be.
- lieutenant colonel — a commissioned officer ranking next below a colonel and next above a major.
- like a house afire — a building in which people live; residence for human beings.
- lily of the valley — a plant, Convallaria majalis, having an elongated cluster of small, drooping, bell-shaped, fragrant white flowers.
- limestone pavement — a horizontal surface of exposed limestone in which the joints have been enlarged, cutting the surface into roughly rectangular blocks
- limited government — confined within limits; restricted or circumscribed: a limited space; limited resources.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- line one's pockets — to put into one's pocket: to pocket one's keys.
- linear accelerator — an accelerator in which particles are propelled in straight paths by the use of alternating electric voltages that are timed in such a way that the particles receive increasing increments of energy.
- linear combination — a sum of products of each quantity times a constant: The expression aX + bY + cZ is a linear combination of X, Y, and Z, where a, b, and c are constants.
- linear programming — any of several methods for finding where a given linear function of several nonnegative variables assumes an extreme value and for determining the extreme value, the variable usually being subjected to constraints in the form of linear equalities or inequalities.
- lingual titubation — stuttering or stammering
- lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
- liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
- liquid distributor — A liquid distributor is a device which is used to spread liquid when it enters a packed column (= a tall vessel with packing, used for separating substances).
- list comprehension — (functional programming) An expression in a functional language denoting the results of some operation on (selected) elements of one or more lists. An example in Haskell: This returns all pairs of numbers (x,y) where x and y are elements of the list 1, 2, ..., 10, y <= x and their sum is less than 10. A list comprehension is simply "syntactic sugar" for a combination of applications of the functions, concat, map and filter. For instance the above example could be written: The term "list comprehension" appears in the references below. The earliest reference to the notation is in Rod Burstall and John Darlington's description of their language, NPL. David Turner subsequently adopted this notation in his languages SASL, KRC and Miranda, where he has called them "ZF expressions", set abstractions and list abstractions (in his 1985 FPCA paper [Miranda: A Non-Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types]).
- literae humaniores — (at Oxford University) the faculty concerned with Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and philosophy; classics
- lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
- little spotted cat — a small New World tiger cat, Felis tigrinus, ranging from Costa Rica to northern Argentina.
- live by one's wits — the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas that awaken amusement and pleasure. Synonyms: drollery, facetiousness, waggishness, repartee.
- lives of the poets — a collection (1779–81), by Samuel Johnson, of biographical and critical essays on 52 English poets.
- local area network — a system for linking private telecommunications equipment, as in a building or cluster of buildings.
- local examinations — (in the UK) any of various examinations, such as the GCE, set by university boards and conducted in local centres, schools, etc
- locally finite set — a collection of sets in a topological space in which each point of the space has a neighborhood that intersects a finite number of sets of the collection.
- locked-in syndrome — a condition in which a person is conscious but unable to move any part of the body except the eyes: results from damage to the brainstem
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- logarithmus dualis — (mathematics) (ld) Latin for logarithm base two. More commonly written as "log" with a subscript "2". Roughly the number of bits required to represent an integer.
- logical complement — (logic) In Boolean algebra, the logical complement or negation of a Boolean value is the opposite value, given by the following truth table: A | -A --+--- T | F F | T -A is also written as A with a bar over it or with a small vertical line hanging from the right-hand end of the "-" (LaTeX \neg) or as A'. In the C programming language, it is !A and in digital circuit design, /A.
- logical positivism — a philosophical movement that stresses the function of philosophy as a method of criticizing and analyzing science and that rejects all transcendental metaphysics, statements of fact being held to be meaningful only if they have verifiable consequences in experience and in statements of logic, mathematics, or philosophy itself, and with such statements of fact deriving their validity from the rules of language.
- logical positivist — an exponent or follower of logical positivism
- logical shift left — logical shift
- logically possible — capable of being described without self-contradiction
- lone-parent family — a family in which there is only one parent
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- long hundredweight — a hundredweight of 112 pounds (50.8 kg), the usual hundredweight in Great Britain, but now rare in the U.S.
- long-distance call — phone call: not local area
- long-horned beetle — any of numerous, often brightly colored beetles of the family Cerambycidae, usually with long antennae, the larva of which bores into the wood of living or decaying trees.
- long-hours culture — The long-hours culture is the way in which some workers feel that they are expected to work much longer hours than they are paid to do.
- 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.
- loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
- lord chief justice — the presiding judge of Britain's High Court of Justice, the superior court of record for both criminal and civil cases.
- loschmidt's number — the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure, equal to 2.687 × 10 19.
- lose one's marbles — If you say that someone has lost their marbles, you mean that their ideas or behaviour are very strange, as if they have become insane.
- louisiana purchase — a treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
- love-lies-bleeding — an amaranth, especially Amaranthus caudatus, having spikes of crimson flowers.