16-letter words containing s, e, l, o
- lesser spearwort — a Eurasian ranunculaceous plant, R. flammula, of the genus Ranunculus, which grows in wet places and has long narrow leaves and yellow flowers
- let loose (with) — to set free or give out; release
- levallois-perret — a suburb of Paris, in N France, on the Seine.
- level descriptor — one of a set of criteria used to assess the performance of a pupil in a particular subject
- lexicostatistics — the statistical study of the vocabulary of a language or languages for historical purposes.
- libation-bearers — Choëphori.
- liberal unionist — a Liberal who opposed Gladstone's policy of Irish Home Rule in 1886 and after
- 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.
- lighthouse point — a city in NW Florida.
- lightning stroke — a discharge of lightning between a cloud and the earth, esp one that causes damage
- lignin sulfonate — a brown powder consisting of a sulfonate salt made from waste liquor of the sulfate pulping process of soft wood: used in concrete, leather tanning, as an additive in oil-well drilling mud, and as a source of vanillin.
- limited-stop bus — a bus which only stops at a small number of predetermined stops, rather than on request
- line composition — type produced on a linecaster
- line of business — profession, trade: field
- line of position — a line connecting all the possible positions of a ship or aircraft, as determined by a single observation. Abbreviation: LOP.
- linux user group — (body, operating system) (LUG) Any organisation of Linux users in a local area, university, etc., that offers mutual technical support, companionship with people of similar interests and promotes the use of Linux among computer users generally. LUGs often hold Install Fests for the general public, in which experienced Linux users explain and supervise the installation of Linux on new users' systems.
- lissajous figure — the series of plane curves traced by an object executing two mutually perpendicular harmonic motions.
- listen to reason — be persuaded
- liver of sulphur — a mixture of potassium sulphides used as a fungicide and insecticide and in the treatment of skin diseases
- lloyd's register — a publication, issued annually by Lloyd's, consisting of a list of all of the world's seagoing vessels and including such information as their age, tonnage, and classification.
- lobe-finned fish — any fish that has rounded scales and lobed fins, as the coelacanth.
- lonely hearts ad — an advertisement placed by someone who is trying to find a lover or a friend
- long time no see — I haven't seen you for a long time
- long-established — having a long history; old
- long-nosed skate — a fish; Raja oxyrinchus
- loose connection — an imperfect electrical connection, as in a plug or car engine
- lord howe island — an island in the S Pacific, E of Australia: a dependency of New South Wales. 5 sq. mi. (13 sq. km).
- lords-and-ladies — (used with a singular verb) cuckoopint.
- lose one's nerve — to become timid, esp failing to perform some audacious act
- lose one's shirt — a long- or short-sleeved garment for the upper part of the body, usually lightweight and having a collar and a front opening.
- lose one's voice — If you lose your voice, you cannot speak for a while because of an illness.
- lose your memory — If you lose your memory, you forget things that you used to know.
- lost river range — a mountain range in E central Idaho. Highest peak, Borah Peak (also highest in the state), 12,662 feet (3862 meters).
- 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.
- louise bourgeois — Léon Victor Auguste [ley-awn veek-tawr oh-gyst] /leɪˈɔ̃ vikˈtɔr oʊˈgyst/ (Show IPA), 1851–1925, French statesman: Nobel Peace Prize 1920.
- 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
- 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.
- mail-order house — a retail firm that conducts its business by receiving orders and shipping its merchandise through the mail and that supplies its customers with catalogs, circulars, etc.
- malcontentedness — not satisfied or content with currently prevailing conditions or circumstances.
- malicious damage — Malicious damage is damage caused on purpose to the property of another person.
- manganese nodule — a small irregular concretion found on deep ocean floors having high concentrations of certain metals, esp manganese
- manganese violet — a moderate to strong purple color.
- marine biologist — scientist who studies sea life