21-letter words containing t, o, h, r
- 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.
- horizontal tabulation — (character) (tab, Control-I, HT, ASCII 9) A character which when displayed or printed causes the following character to be placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a multiple of the current tab width. Commonly (especially in Unix(?)) the tab width is eight, so, counting from the left margin (column zero), the tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24, up to the width of the screen or page. A tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting program source code to conserve indentation. Represented as "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
- 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.
- hydraulic accumulator — an apparatus in which gas, usually air, is used as a cushion or shock absorber in a hydraulic system.
- hypercholesterolaemia — the condition of having a high concentration of cholesterol in the blood
- 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 co-ordination with — If you do something in co-ordination with someone else, you both organize your activities so that you work together efficiently.
- 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
- indicated horse-power — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- industrial psychology — the application of psychological principles and techniques to business and industrial problems, as in the selection of personnel or development of training programs.
- 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.
- interpersonal therapy — a type of psychotherapy that focuses on conflicts in one's personal relationships.
- 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
- 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)
- light armored vehicle — an eight-wheeled armored reconnaissance car with a 25mm cannon, in service with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in the 1980s.
- 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.
- lordship of the isles — an overlordship of the Western Isles of Scotland and adjacent lands instituted in 1266 when Magnus of Norway ceded the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, and Kintyre to the King of Scotland, and claimed by the chiefs of Clan Dougall and later by those of Clan Donald. The title was forfeited to James IV in 1493 and is now held by the eldest son of the sovereign
- 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.
- lotus-of-the-true-law — a Mahayana sutra, forming with its references to Amida and the Bodhisattvas the basis for the doctrine that there is something of Buddha in everyone, so that salvation is universally available: a central text of Mahayana Buddhism.
- 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.
- lull before the storm — If you describe a situation as the lull before the storm, you mean that although it is calm now, there is going to be trouble in the future.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
- main-topsail schooner — a two-masted or three-masted schooner having square topsails on the foremast and mainmast: a jackass brig or jackass bark.
- maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
- majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
- make heavy weather of — to create needless difficulties in dealing with
- make yourself at home — settle in
- maryland yellowthroat — (in former systems of nomenclature) the common yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, especially the eastern U.S. subspecies.
- maximum value theorem — the theorem that for a real-valued function f whose domain is a compact set, there is at least one element x in the domain of f for which f (x) achieves its largest value.
- mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.