15-letter words starting with la
- las vegas night — an evening of casino-style gambling, usually sponsored by a charitable, religious, or other fund-raising organization.
- laser chemistry — the use of a laser to initiate and control chemical reactions.
- laser machining — Laser machining is a process in which material is removed from a surface using light from a laser.
- laser ring gyro — a system of aerial navigation in which rotation is sensed by the measuring of the frequency shift of laser light in a closed circuit in a horizontal plane
- laser treatment — any of various medical and surgical techniques using lasers, such as the removal of small growths
- late in the day — in the evening
- latensification — (in photography) the process of intensifying a latent image by the use of chemicals, extra exposure to light, or other means
- latent function — any function of an institution or other social phenomenon that is unintentional and often unrecognized.
- latent learning — learning mediated neither by reward nor by the expectation of reward
- lateral fissure — the fissure separating the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes of the cerebrum.
- lateral moraine — a moraine formed at the side of a glacier.
- lateran council — any of the five ecumenical councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215, 1512–17) held in the Lateran Palace.
- latino-american — an American who is of Latin-American or Spanish origin
- latino-faliscan — a group of early Italic languages, including Latin and Faliscan.
- latter prophets — a subdivision of the books constituting the second main part of the Hebrew Bible, comprising those books which in Christian tradition are alone called the Prophets and which are divided into Major Prophets and Minor Prophets
- laundry service — clothes-washing business
- lauric aldehyde — a colorless, extremely alcohol-soluble liquid having a strong floral odor, C 12 H 24 O, used chiefly in perfumery.
- lavatory humour — humour characterized by excessive mention of lavatories and the excretory functions; vulgar or scatological humour
- lavender cotton — a silvery-gray, evergreen, woody composite plant, Santolina chamaecyparissus, of southern Europe, having yellow flower heads.
- law of averages — a statistical principle formulated by Jakob Bernoulli to show a more or less predictable ratio between the number of random trials of an event and its occurrences.
- law of identity — the law that any proposition implies itself.
- law of the mean — the theorem that for a function continuous on a closed interval and differentiable on the corresponding open interval, there is a point in the interval such that the difference in functional values at the endpoints is equal to the derivative evaluated at the particular point and multiplied by the difference in the endpoints.
- law-enforcement — of police, anti-crime
- lay a finger on — to harm
- lay it on thick — to put or place in a horizontal position or position of rest; set down: to lay a book on a desk.
- lay of the land — the general state or condition of affairs under consideration; the facts of a situation: We asked a few questions to get the lay of the land.
- lay on the line — a mark or stroke long in proportion to its breadth, made with a pen, pencil, tool, etc., on a surface: a line down the middle of the page.
- lay oneself out — to put or place in a horizontal position or position of rest; set down: to lay a book on a desk.
- lazaro cardenas — Lázaro [lah-sah-raw] /ˈlɑ sɑˌrɔ/ (Show IPA), 1895–1970, Mexican general and political reformer: president 1934–40.
- lazy evaluation — (reduction) An evaluation strategy combining normal order evaluation with updating. Under normal order evaluation (outermost or call-by-name evaluation) an expression is evaluated only when its value is needed in order for the program to return (the next part of) its result. Updating means that if an expression's value is needed more than once (i.e. it is shared), the result of the first evaluation is remembered and subsequent requests for it will return the remembered value immediately without further evaluation. This is often implemented by graph reduction. An unevaluated expression is represented as a closure - a data structure containing all the information required to evaluate the expression. Lazy evaluation is one evaluation strategy used to implement non-strict functions. Function arguments may be infinite data structures (especially lists) of values, the components of which are evaluated as needed. According to Phil Wadler the term was invented by Jim Morris. Opposite: eager evaluation. A partial kind of lazy evaluation implements lazy data structures or especially lazy lists where function arguments are passed evaluated but the arguments of data constructors are not evaluated.