20-letter words containing p, a, n, e, l
- inertial upper stage — a U.S. two-stage, solid-propellant rocket used to boost a relatively heavy spacecraft from a low earth orbit into a planetary trajectory or an elliptical transfer orbit. Abbreviation: IUS.
- inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- internal respiration — the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the blood or lymph and the body cells
- interpersonal skills — skills that contribute to dealing successfully with other people
- interpersonal theory — the theory that personality development and behavior disorders are related to and determined by relationships between persons.
- interplanetary space — the region of space occurring around the sun and planets of the solar system. The density is normally negligible although cosmic rays, meteorites, gas clouds, etc, can occur
- ionization potential — the energy required to remove an electron from an atom.
- japanese honeysuckle — a climbing honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, introduced into the eastern U.S. from Asia, having fragrant, white flowers that fade to yellow.
- jasper national park — a national park in the Canadian Rockies in W Alberta, in SW Canada.
- java development kit — (language, compiler) (JDK) A free Sun Microsystems product which provides the environment required for programming in Java. The JDK is available for a variety of platforms, but most notably Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows.
- judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
- king charles spaniel — a variety of the English toy spaniel having a black-and-tan coat.
- knights hospitallers — a military religious order founded about the time of the first crusade (1096–99) among European crusaders. It took its name from a hospital and hostel in Jerusalem
- kruger national park — a wildlife sanctuary in NE South Africa: the world's largest game reserve. Area: over 21 700 sq km (8400 sq miles)
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- language development — the development verbal communication skills in children
- lavaliere microphone — a small microphone that hangs around the neck of a performer or speaker.
- law of superposition — Geology. a basic law of geochronology, stating that in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.
- learned helplessness — the act of giving up trying as a result of consistent failure to be rewarded in life, thought to be a symptom of depression
- legal representation — representation by a lawyer
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- linear address space — A memory addressing scheme used in processors where the whole memory can be accessed using a single address that fits in a single register or instruction. This contrasts with a segmented memory architecture, such as that used on the Intel 8086, where an address is given by an offset from a base address held in one of the "segment registers". Linear addressing greatly simplifies programming at the assembly language level but requires more instruction word bits to be allocated for an address.
- linear extrapolation — Statistics, Mathematics. extrapolation using a linear equation to estimate the value of a variable or function outside the tabulated or observed range.
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- literate programming — (programming, text) Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
- llywelyn ap gruffudd — died 1282, prince of Wales (1258–82): the only Welsh ruler to be recognized as such by the English
- llywelyn ap iorwerth — called Llywelyn the Great. died 1240, prince of Gwynedd, N Wales (1194–1238), who extended his rule over most of Wales
- lump in one's throat — the passage from the mouth to the stomach or to the lungs, including the pharynx, esophagus, larynx, and trachea.
- lunisolar precession — the principal component of the precession of the equinoxes, produced by the gravitational attraction of the sun and the moon on the equatorial bulge of the earth.
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
- mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
- malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
- material implication — equivalence (def 4a).
- maternal deprivation — the lack of a mother in a child's life, considered a cause of psychological problems later in life
- mechanical impedance — impedance (def 2).
- mechanical-impedance — Electricity. the total opposition to alternating current by an electric circuit, equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the resistance and reactance of the circuit and usually expressed in ohms. Symbol: Z.
- medical practitioner — doctor
- member of parliament — A Member of Parliament is a person who has been elected by the people in a particular area to represent them in a country's parliament. The abbreviation MP is often used.
- multipart stationery — continuous stationery comprising two or more sheets, either carbonless or with carbon paper between the sheets
- multiple inheritance — (programming) In object-oriented programming, the possibility that a class may have more than one direct superclass in the class hierarchy. The opposite is single inheritance.
- multiple personality — a rare disorder in which an individual displays several functionally dissociated personalities, each of a complexity comparable to that of a normal individual.
- multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
- multistep hydroplane — a motorship having a flat bottom built as a series of planes inclined forward, the ship planing on each from stem to stern as its speed increases.
- neapolitan ice cream — variously flavored and colored ice cream and ice mixtures frozen in layers.
- neon lamp (or tube) — a discharge lamp containing neon, that ionizes and glows with a red light (neon light) when an electric current is sent through it: used esp. in advertising signs
- nephroangiosclerosis — (pathology) sclerosis of the renal arterioles.
- net national product — the gross national product less allowance for depreciation of capital goods. Abbreviation: NNP.
- neurophysiologically — In terms of, or with regard to, neurophysiology.