17-letter words containing u, l, e, m, a
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- ladder tournament — a tournament in which the entrants are listed by name and rank, advancement being by means of challenging and defeating an entrant ranked one or two places higher.
- lambdoidal suture — the lambda-shaped seam or line of joining between the occipital and two parietal bones at the back part of the skull.
- lame-duck session — (formerly) the December to March session of those members of the U.S. Congress who were defeated for reelection the previous November.
- langmuir isotherm — A Langmuir isotherm is a classical relationship between the concentrations of a solid and a fluid, used to describe a state of no change in the sorption process.
- latent strabismus — the tendency, controllable by muscular effort, for one or both eyes to exhibit strabismus.
- laurent's theorem — the theorem that a function that is analytic on an annulus can be represented by a Laurent series on the annulus.
- lautenclavicymbal — a harpsichord with strings of gut rather than metal.
- le morte d'arthur — a compilation and translation of French Arthurian romances by Sir Thomas Malory, printed by Caxton in 1485.
- lebanon mountains — a mountain range extending the length of Lebanon, in the central part. Highest peak, 10,049 feet (3063 meters).
- leibniz mountains — a mountain range on the SW limb of the moon, containing the highest peaks (10 000 metres) on the moon
- letters of marque — a former government document authorizing an individual to make reprisals on the subjects of an enemy nation, specif. to arm a ship and capture enemy merchant ships and cargo
- light machine gun — any air-cooled machine gun having a caliber not greater than 0.30 inches (7.6 mm).
- limousine liberal — a wealthy left-wing person
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- lithium carbonate — a colorless crystalline compound, Li 2 CO 3 , slightly soluble in water: used in ceramic and porcelain glazes, pharmaceuticals, and luminescent paints.
- luminous efficacy — the quotient of the luminous flux of a radiation and its corresponding radiant flux
- luminous exitance — the ability of a surface to emit light expressed as the luminous flux per unit area at a specified point on the surface
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- macfarlane burnet — Sir (Frank) Macfarlane [muh k-fahr-luh n] /məkˈfɑr lən/ (Show IPA), 1899–1985, Australian physician: Nobel Prize in Physiology 1960.
- macroevolutionary — Pertaining to, or as a result of macroevolution.
- magellanic clouds — either of two irregular galactic clusters in the southern heavens that are the nearest independent star system to the Milky Way.
- magnesium sulfate — a white, water-soluble salt, MgSO 4 , used chiefly in medicine and in the processing of leather and textiles.
- mail users' shell — (messaging) (mush) A MUA for Unix and MS-DOS. It has both line-mode and full-screen interfaces as well as a SunView interface. mush provides a very powerful shell interface with a csh-like scripting language, plenty of environment variables, command-line aliases, filename completion, conditionals, and command piping.
- make the dust fly — earth or other matter in fine, dry particles.
- malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
- manganese sulfate — a pink, water-soluble, usually tetrahydrate salt, MnSO 4 ⋅4H 2 O, used chiefly in fertilizers, paints, and varnishes.
- manual typewriter — a keyboard machine, operated entirely by hand, for writing mechanically in characters resembling print
- many-valued logic — the study of logical systems in which the truth-values that a proposition may have are not restricted to two, representing only truth and falsity
- marquesas islands — a group of volcanic islands in the S Pacific, in French Polynesia. Pop: 8712 (2002). Area: 1287 sq km (497 sq miles)
- marriage equality — the state of having the same rights and responsibilities of marriage as others, regardless of one's sexual orientation or gender identity.
- masculine caesura — a caesura occurring immediately after a stressed or a long syllable.
- maurice chevalier — Maurice (Auguste) [maw-rees aw-guh st;; French moh-rees oh-gyst] /mɔˈris ˈɔ gəst;; French moʊˈris oʊˈgüst/ (Show IPA), 1888–1972, French actor and singer.
- maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
- maxwell equations — equations developed by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) upon which classical electromagnetic theory is based
- mechanical tissue — a plant tissue made up of hard, thick-walled cells that add strength to an organ
- medical insurance — a type of insurance intended to cover possible future medical expenses
- medical marijuana — marijuana prescribed by a doctor and used as a medicine: medical marijuana in pill form or oral spray.
- medical procedure — A medical procedure is a medical treatment or operation.
- medicochirurgical — pertaining to medicine and surgery.
- medulla oblongata — the lowest or hindmost part of the brain, continuous with the spinal cord.
- mensural notation — a system of musical notation of the 13th to the late 16th centuries, marked by the use of note symbols such as the longa and brevis, the absence of bar lines and ties, and the equivalence in value of one note to either two or three of the next smaller degree.
- messier catalogue — a catalogue of 103 nonstellar objects, such as nebulae and galaxies, prepared in 1781–86. An object is referred to by its number in this catalogue, for example the Andromeda Galaxy is referred to as M31
- metallofullerenes — Plural form of metallofullerene.
- microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
- microevolutionary — Of or pertaining to microevolution.
- millennial church — the church of the Shakers.
- miscellaneousness — Quality of being miscellaneous.
- misunderstandable — Capable of being misunderstood.
- modeling language — modelling language