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18-letter words containing s, c, o, r, i, a

  • geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.
  • great expectations — a novel (1861) by Charles Dickens.
  • guidance counselor — advisor in schools
  • helicopter station — a place where helicopters are kept in readiness for use
  • heteroscedasticity — (statistics) The property of a series of random variables of 'not' every variable having the same finite variance.
  • heteroskedasticity — Alternative spelling of heteroscedasticity.
  • hippocratic facies — the sallow facial expression, with listless staring eyes, often regarded as denoting approaching death
  • histomorphological — histology.
  • historical fiction — the genre of literature, film, etc., comprising narratives that take place in the past and are characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.
  • historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
  • historical present — the present tense used in narrating a past event as if happening at the time of narration.
  • horseless carriage — an automobile: The horse and buggy were eventually replaced by the horseless carriage.
  • hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
  • hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
  • hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
  • hyposulfurous acid — an acid, H 2 S 2 O 4 , next in a series below sulfurous acid, known only in solution or in the form of its salts.
  • hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
  • ideas of reference — a schizophrenic symptom in which the patient thinks that things completely disconnected from him are influencing him or conveying messages to him
  • in comparison with — when compared to
  • in inverted commas — If you say in inverted commas after a word or phrase, you are indicating that it is inaccurate or unacceptable in some way, or that you are quoting someone else.
  • in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
  • inspector of taxes — an official of HMRC whose work is to assess individuals' income tax liability
  • instruction manual — how-to, usage guide
  • intercartilaginous — (anatomy) Within cartilage.
  • internal secretion — a secretion, esp a hormone, that is absorbed directly into the blood
  • involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
  • irreconcilableness — The quality of being irreconcilable; irreconcilability; incompatibility; incongruity.
  • irreproachableness — The quality or state of being irreproachable; integrity; innocence.
  • isabella of france — 1292–1358, wife (1308–27) of Edward II of England, whom, aided by her lover, Roger de Mortimer, she deposed; mother of Edward III
  • isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
  • italian corn salad — a southern European plant, Valerianella eriocarpa, of the valerian family, having edible, spoon-shaped, hairy leaves and dense clusters of pale-blue flowers.
  • japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
  • knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
  • lactose intolerant — cannot digest milk
  • lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
  • lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
  • lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
  • lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
  • liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
  • lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • 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.
  • macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.
  • magistrates' court — law: handles minor crimes
  • magnetic resonance — the response by atoms, molecules, or nuclei subjected to a magnetic field to radio waves or other forms of energy: used in medicine for scanning
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
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