17-letter words containing r, h, e, u
- greenhouse effect — an atmospheric heating phenomenon, caused by short-wave solar radiation being readily transmitted inward through the earth's atmosphere but longer-wavelength heat radiation less readily transmitted outward, owing to its absorption by atmospheric carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and other gases; thus, the rising level of carbon dioxide is viewed with concern.
- greenland halibut — a flatfish, Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, similar and related to the halibut
- ground angle shot — a photograph or film shot in which the lens is near the ground, usually pointing up somewhat
- guardhouse lawyer — a person in military service, especially an inmate of a guardhouse or brig, who is or claims to be an authority on military law, regulations, and soldiers' rights.
- guerrilla theater — the presentation of short propaganda plays or skits, usually on sociopolitical themes, as war or repression, often on the streets or in other nontheater locations.
- guinea-hen flower — checkered lily.
- hairline fracture — a very fine crack in a bone
- half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels
- hammered dulcimer — dulcimer (sense 1)
- hasbrouck heights — a borough in NE New Jersey.
- have a reputation — to be known or notorious, esp for promiscuity, excessive drinking, or the like
- have a short fuse — a tube, cord, or the like, filled or saturated with combustible matter, for igniting an explosive.
- heating apparatus — an apparatus that heats something
- heimlich maneuver — an emergency rescue procedure for application to someone choking on a foreign object, in which the rescuer places a fist between the victim's lower ribs or upper abdomen from behind and exerts sudden pressure in the form of thrusts of sufficient force to help eject the object from the windpipe.
- henry of portugal — ("the Navigator") 1394–1460, prince of Portugal: sponsor of geographic explorations.
- hepatitis b virus — a form of hepatitis caused by a DNA virus (hepatitis B virus, or HBV) that persists in the blood, characterized by a long incubation period: usually transmitted by sexual contact or by injection or ingestion of infected blood or other bodily fluids.
- herbaceous border — A herbaceous border is a flower bed containing a mixture of plants that flower every year.
- heritage industry — an industry that manages the historical sites, buildings, and museums in a particular place, with the aim of encouraging tourism
- heterochlamydeous — (of a plant) having a perianth consisting of distinct sepals and petals
- hold one's ground — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- homeland security — national defence
- horseradish sauce — a piquant sauce made from horseradish root, vinegar, etc, and traditionally eaten in Britain with roast beef
- household cavalry — (in Britain) cavalry units forming part of the ceremonial guard of the monarch.
- household rubbish — the unwanted things and waste material produced in the running of a household, such as used paper, empty tins and bottles, and waste food
- housekeeping cart — A housekeeping cart is a large metal basket on wheels which is used by a cleaner in a hotel to move clean bed linen, towels, and cleaning equipment.
- how's-your-father — sexual intercourse
- human engineering — an applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker.
- humpbacked bridge — A humpbacked bridge or humpback bridge is a short and very curved bridge with a shape similar to a semi-circle.
- hundred-percenter — a completely patriotic, sometimes jingoistic person.
- hurler's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by physical deformity and mental deficiency
- hurricane warning — a storm warning given for winds with speeds exceeding 63 knots (72 mph, 32 m/sec) when the source of the winds is a tropical cyclone.
- huygens principle — the principle that all points on a wave front of light are sources of secondary waves and that surfaces tangential to these waves define the position of the wave front at any point in time.
- hydrogen fluoride — a colorless corrosive gas, HF, the anhydride of hydrofluoric acid, used chiefly as a catalyst and in the fluorination of hydrocarbons.
- hydrogen sulphide — Chemistry
- hydrotherapeutics — hydrotherapy.
- hyperintellectual — appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits.
- immunotherapeutic — (immunology, medicine) Of a pharmaceutical, acting on the immune system to treat disease; used in immunotherapy.
- in double harness — in a harness for two animals pulling the same carriage, plow, etc.
- in the background — behind the focus of attention
- interdental brush — a small brush that is used to clean between the teeth
- interrupt handler — (software) A routine which is executed when an interrupt occurs. Interrupt handlers typically deal with low-level events in the hardware of a computer system such as a character arriving at a serial port or a tick of a real-time clock. Special care is required when writing an interrupt handler to ensure that either the interrupt which triggered the handler's execution is masked out (inhibitted) until the handler exits, or the handler is re-entrant so that multiple concurrent invocations will not interfere with each other. If interrupts are masked then the handler must execute as quickly as possible so that important events are not missed. This is often arranged by splitting the processing associated with the event into "upper" and "lower" halves. The lower part is the interrupt handler which masks out further interrupts as required, checks that the appropriate event has occurred (this may be necessary if several events share the same interrupt), services the interrupt, e.g. by reading a character from a UART and writing it to a queue, and re-enabling interrupts. The upper half executes as part of a user process. It waits until the interrupt handler has run. Normally the operating system is responsible for reactivating a process which is waiting for some low-level event. It detects this by a shared flag or by inspecting a shared queue or by some other synchronisation mechanism. It is important that the upper and lower halves do not interfere if an interrupt occurs during the execution of upper half code. This is usually ensured by disabling interrupts during critical sections of code such as removing a character from a queue.
- italian greyhound — one of an Italian breed of toy dogs resembling a greyhound.
- junior technician — a rank in the RAF senior to aircraftman: comparable to that of private in the army
- 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.
- 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.
- laurent's theorem — the theorem that a function that is analytic on an annulus can be represented by a Laurent series on the annulus.
- le morte d'arthur — a compilation and translation of French Arthurian romances by Sir Thomas Malory, printed by Caxton in 1485.
- lighthouse keeper — a person who mans a lighthouse and makes sure that the light is working properly
- 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.