16-letter words containing s, l, i, n
- like gangbusters — a law-enforcement officer who specializes in breaking up organized crime, often by forceful or sensational means.
- 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.
- lines per minute — (unit) (lpm) A unit used to measure line printer throughput.
- linguistic atlas — dialect atlas.
- linguistic stock — a parent language and all its derived dialects and languages.
- 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.
- lipstick lesbian — a lesbian who is feminine in manner or appearance; a femme.
- listen to reason — be persuaded
- listening device — a device used to overhear, record, or monitor speech
- live in the past — If you accuse someone of living in the past, you mean that they think too much about the past or believe that things are the same as they were in the past.
- living daylights — having life; being alive; not dead: living persons.
- living standards — standard of living; material quality of life
- lizard peninsula — a promontory in SW England, in SW Cornwall: the southernmost point in Great Britain
- loan translation — the process whereby a compound word or expression is created by literal translation of each of the elements of a compound word or expression in another language, as marriage of convenience from French mariage de convenance.
- lobe-finned fish — any fish that has rounded scales and lobed fins, as the coelacanth.
- 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 time no see — I haven't seen you for a long time
- long-established — having a long history; old
- 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
- 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 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.
- lost river range — a mountain range in E central Idaho. Highest peak, Borah Peak (also highest in the state), 12,662 feet (3862 meters).
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- 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.
- 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.
- machiavellianism — of, like, or befitting Machiavelli.
- machine washable — suitable for washing in a washing machine
- maclaurin series — a Taylor series in which the reference point is zero.
- macro-linguistic — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macrolinguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- magnifying glass — a lens that produces an enlarged image of an object.
- managerial staff — staff in positions of management
- manganese violet — a moderate to strong purple color.
- manipulativeness — Quality of being manipulative.
- marginal costing — a method of cost accounting and decision making used for internal reporting in which only marginal costs are charged to cost units and fixed costs are treated as a lump sum
- marine biologist — scientist who studies sea life
- marriage license — permit to marry
- marsh cinquefoil — a variety of cinquefoil, Potentilla palustris, that grows in marshy areas
- marshall islands — a republic, consisting of a group of 34 coral islands in the W central Pacific: formerly part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (1947–87); status of free association with the US from 1986; consists of two parallel chains, Ralik and Ratak. Official languages: Marshallese and English. Religion: Roman Catholic majority. Currency: US dollar. Capital: Delap-Uliga-Djarrit, on Majuro atoll. Pop: 69 747 (2013 est). Area: (land) 181 sq km (70 sq miles); (lagoon) 11 655 sq km (4500 sq miles)
- marshalling yard — a place or depot where railway wagons are shunted and made up into trains and where engines, carriages, etc, are kept when not in use
- marsupialization — (surgery) The surgical technique of cutting a slit into a cyst and suturing its edges to form a continuous surface from the exterior to the interior of the cyst, allowing it to drain freely.