18-letter words containing r, a, i, l
- american civil war — the war in the U.S. between the North and the South, 1861–65.
- an overgrown child — an adult whose behaviour is characteristic of a child
- analogue recording — a sound recording process in which an audio input is converted into an analogous electrical waveform
- analytical reagent — a chemical compound of a known high standard of purity
- andorre la vieille — French name for the capital of Andorra, situated in the west of the principality. Pop: 22 035 (2003 est)
- andrew file system — (operating system, storage) (AFS) The distributed file system of the Andrew Project, adopted by the OSF as part of their Distributed Computing Environment.
- angular dispersion — a measure of the angular separation of light rays of different wavelength or color traversing a prism or diffraction grating, equal to the rate of change of the angle of deviation with respect to the change in wavelength.
- anti-commercialism — the principles, practices, and spirit of commerce.
- anti-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- anticholinesterase — any of a group of substances that inhibit the action of cholinesterase
- antifriction alloy — a metallic alloy, as Babbitt metal or bearing bronze, having antifriction qualities.
- antiprostaglandins — Plural form of antiprostaglandin.
- apartment building — An apartment building or apartment house is a tall building which contains different apartments on different floors.
- aphrodite of melos — a Greek statue of Venus in marble, c200 b.c., found in 1820 on Melos and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- appalachian spring — a dance (1944) choreographed by Martha Graham, with musical score by Aaron Copland.
- application server — 1.
A designer's or developer's suite of software that helps programmers isolate the business logic in their programs from the platform-related code. Application servers can handle all of the application logic and connectivity found in client-server applications. Many application servers also offer features such as transaction management, clustering and failover, and load balancing; nearly all offer ODBC support. 2. Production programs run on a mid-sized computer that handle all application operations between browser-based computers and an organisation's back-end business applications or databases. The application server works as a translator, allowing, for example, a customer with a browser to search an online retailer's database for pricing information. 3. The device on which application server software runs. Application Service Providers offer commercial access to such devices. - appraisal drilling — (in the oil industry) drilling carried out once oil or gas has been discovered in order to assess the extent of the field, the reserves, the possible rate of production, and the properties of the oil or gas
- apprentice plumber — a trainee plumber
- appropriation bill — a bill to set apart money for a specific purpose
- arbiter elegantiae — Gaius [gey-uh s] /ˈgeɪ əs/ (Show IPA), (Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Arbiter Elegantiae") died a.d. 66? Roman satirist.
- arbitration clause — a clause in a contract laying down that disputes between the parties should be settled by arbitration
- arctic archipelago — group of mostly large islands in the Arctic Ocean off the N coast of Canada
- aristotelian logic — the logical theories of Aristotle as developed in the Middle Ages, concerned mainly with syllogistic reasoning: traditional as opposed to modern or symbolic logic
- aristotles-lantern — a complex arrangement of muscles and calcareous teeth and plates forming an eversible organ in most echinoids, functioning in mastication.
- arm's-length price — a price of a transaction agreed in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved
- arsenic trisulfide — a yellow or red crystalline substance, As 2 S 3 , occurring in nature as the mineral orpiment, and used as a pigment (king's yellow) and in pyrotechnics.
- artificial gravity — a simulated gravity or sensation of weight established within a spacecraft by means of the craft's rotation, acceleration, or deceleration.
- artificial horizon — an aircraft instrument, using a gyroscope, that indicates the aircraft's attitude in relation to the horizontal
- artificial reality — virtual reality.
- as far as possible — to the greatest possible extent
- asciibetical order — (jargon, programming) /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a".
- asiatic black bear — a bear, Selenarctos thibetanus, of central and E Asia, whose coat is black with a pale V-shaped mark on the chest
- aspherical surface — a lens or mirror surface that does not form part of a sphere and is used to reduce aberrations
- assignment problem — (mathematics, algorithm) (Or "linear assignment") Any problem involving minimising the sum of C(a, b) over a set P of pairs (a, b) where a is an element of some set A and b is an element of set B, and C is some function, under constraints such as "each element of A must appear exactly once in P" or similarly for B, or both. For example, the a's could be workers and the b's projects. The problem is "linear" because the "cost function" C() depends only on the particular pairing (a, b) and is independent of all other pairings.
- astrological chart — map of constellations at certain time
- astronomical clock — a complex clock showing astronomical phenomena, such as the phases of the moon
- asynchronous logic — (architecture) A data-driven circuit design technique where, instead of the components sharing a common clock and exchanging data on clock edges, data is passed on as soon as it is available. This removes the need to distribute a common clock signal throughout the circuit with acceptable clock skew. It also helps to reduce power dissipation in CMOS circuits because gates only switch when they are doing useful work rather than on every clock edge. There are many kinds of asynchronous logic. Data signals may use either "dual rail encoding" or "data bundling". Each dual rail encoded Boolean is implemented as two wires. This allows the value and the timing information to be communicated for each data bit. Bundled data has one wire for each data bit and another for timing. Level sensitive circuits typically represent a logic one by a high voltage and a logic zero by a low voltage whereas transition signalling uses a change in the signal level to convey information. A speed independent design is tolerant to variations in gate speeds but not to propagation delays in wires; a delay insensitive circuit is tolerant to variations in wire delays as well. The purest form of circuit is delay-insensitive and uses dual-rail encoding with transition signalling. A transition on one wire indicates the arrival of a zero, a transition on the other the arrival of a one. The levels on the wires are of no significance. Such an approach enables the design of fully delay-insensitive circuits and automatic layout as the delays introduced by the layout compiler can't affect the functionality (only the performance). Level sensitive designs can use simpler, stateless logic gates but require a "return to zero" phase in each transition.
- athletic supporter — jockstrap
- augmented interval — an interval that is a half step greater than the corresponding major or perfect interval
- australian doubles — an unusual formation in doubles in which the server's partner is positioned on the same side of the court as the server.
- australian terrier — a small wire-haired breed of terrier similar to the cairn
- australopithecines — Plural form of australopithecine.
- authorized capital — the total amount of value of the shares that a company is allowed to distribute
- autobiographically — In a autobiographical manner.
- auxiliary equation — characteristic equation (def 1b).
- auxiliary language — a language, as Esperanto, Swahili, or English, used for intercommunication by speakers of various other languages.
- auxiliary-equation — Mathematics. the characteristic polynomial of a given matrix, equated to zero. Also called auxiliary equation. an equation with one variable and equated to zero, which is derived from a given linear differential equation and in which the coefficient and power of the variable in each term correspond to the coefficient and order of a derivative in the original equation.
- axis of revolution — an axis in a plane, about which an area is revolved to form a solid of revolution.
- ballistocardiogram — a tracing made by a ballistocardiograph
- barium thiosulfate — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous solid, BaS 2 O 3 ⋅H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of explosives, matches, paints, and varnishes.