21-letter words containing r, h, n, e
- hay-pauncefote treaty — an agreement (1901) between the U.S. and Great Britain giving the U.S. the sole right to build a canal across Central America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific.
- hazard warning device — an appliance fitted to a motor vehicle that operates the hazard lights
- heliocentric parallax — the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer.
- help a person on with — to assist a person in the putting on of (clothes)
- henry steele commager — Henry Steele, 1902–98, U.S. historian, author, and teacher.
- heterogeneous network — (networking) A network running multiple network layer protocols such as DECnet, IP, IPX, XNS.
- hexachlorocyclohexane — (chemistry) A six-chlorine substituted cyclohexane, a polyhalogenated compound used in pesticides.
- higher-order function — (HOF) A function that can take one or more functions as argument and/or return a function as its value. E.g. map in (map f l) which returns the list of results of applying function f to each of the elements of list l. See also curried function.
- highest common factor — greatest common divisor. Abbreviation: H.C.F.
- hildegard (of bingen) — Saint(1098-1179); Ger. nun, composer, & mystic: her day is Sept. 17
- hindu-arabic numerals — Arabic numeral.
- home improvement loan — a government loan for house improvements such as insulation, adding a bathroom, or urgent repairs
- homolosine projection — an equal-area projection of the world, distorting ocean areas in order to minimize the distortion of the continents.
- horizontal stabilizer — the horizontal surface, usually fixed, of an aircraft empennage, to which the elevator is hinged.
- horns and halo effect — a tendency to allow one's judgement of another person, esp in a job interview, to be unduly influenced by an unfavourable (horns) or favourable (halo) first impression based on appearances
- house of prostitution — a brothel.
- hyperkinetic disorder — another name for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- hyperlipoproteinaemia — the condition of having an abnormally high level of lipoproteins in the blood
- hysterosalpingography — (medicine) X-ray examination of the uterus and oviducts following injection of a radiopaque substance.
- immunoelectrophoresis — a technique for the separation and identification of mixtures of proteins, consisting of electrophoresis followed by immunodiffusion.
- immunoelectrophoretic — a technique for the separation and identification of mixtures of proteins, consisting of electrophoresis followed by immunodiffusion.
- in (or out of) phase — in (or not in) a state of exactly parallel movements, oscillations, etc.; in (or not in) synchronization
- in more ways than one — You say in more ways than one to indicate that what you have said is intended to have more than one meaning.
- in one's shirtsleeves — not wearing a jacket
- in the course of time — eventually
- in the first instance — You say in the first instance to mention something that is the first step in a series of actions.
- indicated horse-power — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- information gathering — the process of collecting information about something
- insulin shock therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- internet chess server — (networking, games) An interactive meeting-place on the Internet where people can play chess against each other.
- interpersonal therapy — a type of psychotherapy that focuses on conflicts in one's personal relationships.
- irish republican army — an underground Irish nationalist organization founded to work for Irish independence from Great Britain: declared illegal by the Irish government in 1936, but continues activity aimed at the unification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Abbreviation: IRA, I.R.A.
- japanese stranglehold — a wrestling hold in which an opponent's wrists are pulled to cross his or her arms in front of his or her own neck and exert pressure on the windpipe
- jordan-holder theorem — the theorem that for any two composition series of a group, an isomorphism exists between the corresponding quotient groups of each series, taken in some specified order.
- joseph bonaparte gulf — an inlet of the Timor Sea in N Australia. Width: 360 km (225 miles)
- keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
- laboratory technician — sb who assists in a laboratory
- lactate dehydrogenase — an enzyme that catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate, an important step in carbohydrate metabolism: elevated serum levels indicate injury to kidney, skeletal muscle, or heart muscle. Abbreviation: LDH.
- lap and shoulder belt — a car seat belt
- large hadron collider — a particle accelerator at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, containing a circular underground tunnel 27km (16.8 miles) in circumference, around which two streams of hadrons are sent in opposite directions before being brought together in a high-energy collision
- launch control center — any of a number of underground U.S. command facilities prepared to launch land-based missiles in event of war.
- law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
- leave sb in the lurch — If someone leaves you in the lurch, they go away or stop helping you at a very difficult time.
- like a shag on a rock — abandoned and alone
- linear graph notation — (LGN) A linearised representation of TCOL trees.
- loch ness monster bug — (humour) (Or "Bugfoot") A bug which cannot be reproduced or has only been sighted by one person. Named after the mythical creature claimed to inhabit Loch Ness in Scotland.
- lose one's heart (to) — to fall in love (with)
- lost in the underflow — (jargon) Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to "floating point underflow". The Hacker's Jargon File claimed that it is also a pun on "undertow" (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow". Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit.
- lower the tone of sth — If you say that something lowers the tone of a place or event, you mean that it is not appropriate and makes the place or event seem less respectable.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.