16-letter words containing s, c
- least flycatcher — a small flycatcher, Empidonax minimus, of eastern North America.
- leave of absence — permission to be absent from duty, employment, service, etc.; leave.
- leconte de lisle — Charles Marie [sharl ma-ree] /ʃarl maˈri/ (Show IPA), 1818–94, French poet.
- leisure sickness — a medical condition in which people who have been working become ill with symptoms such as fatigue or muscular pains at a weekend or while on holiday
- lesbian cymatium — cyma reversa.
- lesser celandine — a Eurasian plant, Ranunculus ficaria, of the buttercup family, having heart-shaped leaves and glossy yellow flowers, naturalized in North America.
- level descriptor — one of a set of criteria used to assess the performance of a pupil in a particular subject
- lever escapement — an escapement in which a pivoted lever, made to oscillate by the escape wheel, engages a balance staff and causes it to oscillate.
- lexical analyser — (language) (Or "scanner") The initial input stage of a language processor (e.g. a compiler), the part that performs lexical analysis.
- lexical analysis — (programming) (Or "linear analysis", "scanning") The first stage of processing a language. The stream of characters making up the source program or other input is read one at a time and grouped into lexemes (or "tokens") - word-like pieces such as keywords, identifiers, literals and punctuation. The lexemes are then passed to the parser.
- lexicostatistics — the statistical study of the vocabulary of a language or languages for historical purposes.
- library pictures — a caption used to alert viewers that footage being broadcast is from an earlier time and is not happening now
- lick observatory — the astronomical observatory of the University of California, situated on Mount Hamilton, near San Jose, California, and having a 120-inch (3-meter) reflecting telescope and a 36-inch (91-cm) refracting telescope.
- lick one's chops — Usually, chops. the jaw.
- liebig condenser — a laboratory condenser consisting of a glass tube surrounded by a glass envelope through which cooling water flows
- light microscope — microscope (def 1).
- lighthouse clock — an American mantel clock of the early 19th century, having the dial and works exposed beneath a glass dome on a tapered, cylindrical body.
- lighting effects — the illumination of a play, film, etc
- line composition — type produced on a linecaster
- linguistic atlas — dialect atlas.
- linguistic stock — a parent language and all its derived dialects and languages.
- lipstick lesbian — a lesbian who is feminine in manner or appearance; a femme.
- listening device — a device used to overhear, record, or monitor speech
- literalistically — adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense, as in translation or interpretation: to interpret the law with uncompromising literalism.
- local oscillator — the oscillator in a superheterodyne receiver whose output frequency is mixed with the incoming modulated radio-frequency carrier signal to produce the required intermediate frequency
- logical constant — one of the connectives of a given system of formal logic, esp those of the sentential calculus, not, and, or, and if … then …
- long-tail claims — Long-tail claims are claims that are made or settled a long time after the insurance policy has expired.
- loose connection — an imperfect electrical connection, as in a plug or car engine
- lose one's voice — If you lose your voice, you cannot speak for a while because of an illness.
- lost-wax process — a process of investment casting in which a refractory mold is built up around a pattern of wax and then baked so as to melt and drain off the wax.
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lourenco marques — former name of Maputo.
- low-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.04 and 0.25 per cent carbon
- lucas van leyden — (Lucas Hugensz) 1494–1533, Dutch painter and engraver.
- lumberjack shirt — a thick checked shirt, as worn by lumberjacks
- luminosity class — a classification of stars of a given spectral type according to their luminosity, breaking them down into dwarfs, giants, and supergiants.
- lymphangiectasia — (medicine) dilation of the lymphatic vessels.
- lymphangiectasis — Alt form lymphangiectasia.
- lymphatic system — an extensive network of capillary vessels that transports the interstitial fluid of the body as lymph to the venous blood circulation
- lymphatic tissue — tissue, such as the lymph nodes, tonsils, spleen, and thymus, that produces lymphocytes
- lz77 compression — The first algorithm to use the Lempel-Ziv substitutional compression schemes, proposed in 1977. LZ77 compression keeps track of the last n bytes of data seen, and when a phrase is encountered that has already been seen, it outputs a pair of values corresponding to the position of the phrase in the previously-seen buffer of data, and the length of the phrase. In effect the compressor moves a fixed-size "window" over the data (generally referred to as a "sliding window"), with the position part of the (position, length) pair referring to the position of the phrase within the window. The most commonly used algorithms are derived from the LZSS scheme described by James Storer and Thomas Szymanski in 1982. In this the compressor maintains a window of size N bytes and a "lookahead buffer", the contents of which it tries to find a match for in the window: while (lookAheadBuffer not empty) { get a pointer (position, match) to the longest match in the window for the lookahead buffer; if (length > MINIMUM_MATCH_LENGTH) { output a (position, length) pair; shift the window length characters along; } else { output the first character in the lookahead buffer; shift the window 1 character along; } } Decompression is simple and fast: whenever a (POSITION, LENGTH) pair is encountered, go to that POSITION in the window and copy LENGTH bytes to the output. Sliding-window-based schemes can be simplified by numbering the input text characters mod N, in effect creating a circular buffer. The sliding window approach automatically creates the LRU effect which must be done explicitly in LZ78 schemes. Variants of this method apply additional compression to the output of the LZSS compressor, which include a simple variable-length code (LZB), dynamic Huffman coding (LZH), and Shannon-Fano coding (ZIP 1.x), all of which result in a certain degree of improvement over the basic scheme, especially when the data are rather random and the LZSS compressor has little effect. An algorithm was developed which combines the ideas behind LZ77 and LZ78 to produce a hybrid called LZFG. LZFG uses the standard sliding window, but stores the data in a modified trie data structure and produces as output the position of the text in the trie. Since LZFG only inserts complete *phrases* into the dictionary, it should run faster than other LZ77-based compressors. All popular archivers (arj, lha, zip, zoo) are variations on LZ77.
- lz78 compression — A substitutional compression scheme which works by entering phrases into a dictionary and then, when a reoccurrence of that particular phrase is found, outputting the dictionary index instead of the phrase. Several algorithms are based on this principle, differing mainly in the manner in which they manage the dictionary. The most well-known Lempel-Ziv scheme is Terry Welch's Lempel-Ziv Welch variant of LZ78.
- mach's principle — the proposition that there is no absolute space and that the inertia and acceleration of a body are determined by all of the matter of the universe.
- machado de assiz — Joaquim Maria [zhaw-ah-kim mah-ree-ah] /ˈʒɔ ɑ kɪm mɑˈri ɑ/ (Show IPA), 1839–1908, Brazilian writer.
- machiavellianism — of, like, or befitting Machiavelli.
- machine washable — suitable for washing in a washing machine
- machinist's mate — a petty officer trained to operate, repair, etc. ships' engines
- maclaurin series — a Taylor series in which the reference point is zero.
- macpherson strut — an automobile suspension-system component that consists of a strut combined with a spring and shock absorber and connects the wheel to the frame of the vehicle.
- macro-linguistic — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.