16-letter words containing a, l, m, e
- double pneumonia — pneumonia affecting both lungs.
- down memory lane — If you say that someone is taking a walk or trip down memory lane, you mean that they are talking, writing, or thinking about something that happened to them a long time ago.
- drop a bombshell — If someone drops a bombshell, they give you a sudden piece of bad or unexpected news.
- duchess of malfi — a tragedy (1614?) by John Webster.
- duplessis-mornay — Philippe [fee-leep] /fiˈlip/ (Show IPA), Mornay, Philippe de.
- duplex apartment — an apartment with rooms on two connected floors.
- dynamic language — (language) (Dylan) A simple object-oriented Lisp dialect, most closely resembling CLOS and Scheme, developed by Advanced Technology Group East at Apple Computer. See also Marlais.
- early retirement — retirement before established age
- east gwillimbury — a town in S Ontario, in S Canada.
- economy of scale — a fall in average costs resulting from an increase in the scale of production
- el camino bignum — (humour) /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". In the Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar "real" types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" - but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See bignum).
- elburz mountains — a mountain range in N Iran, parallel to the SW and S shores of the Caspian Sea. Highest peak: Mount Demavend, 5671 m (18 606 ft)
- electrical storm — thunder, lightning
- electromagnetics — Electricity and magnetism, collectively, as a field of study.
- electromagnetism — The interaction of electric currents or fields and magnetic fields.
- electromechanics — the engineering aspects of devices that are controlled by either static or magnetic electric charges
- electromigration — (physics) the transport of small particles under the influence of an electric charge.
- electromyographs — Plural form of electromyograph.
- electromyography — The recording of the electrical activity of muscle tissue, or its representation as a visual display or audible signal, using electrodes attached to the skin or inserted into the muscle.
- elimination game — In sports, an elimination game is a game that decides which team or player will take part in the next stage of a particular competition.
- ellesmere island — a Canadian island in the Arctic Ocean: part of Nunavut; mountainous, with many glaciers. Area: 212 688 sq km (82 119 sq miles)
- emotional labour — work that requires good interpersonal skills
- emulator program — (networking) (EP) IBM software that emulates a 2701/2/3 hard-wired IBM 360 communications controller and resides in a 370x/372x/374x comms controller. See also Partitioned Emulation Program (PEP).
- encephalomalacia — (medicine) A localized softening of the brain substance, due to hemorrhage or inflammation.
- englishman's tie — a type of knot for tying together heavy ropes
- environmentalism — A political and social ideology that seeks to prevent the environment from degradation by human activity.
- environmentalist — A person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment.
- epigrammatically — In a manner suggesting of an epigram.
- epiphenomenalism — (philosophy, psychology, uncountable) The doctrine that mental states and processes are simply incidental effects of physiological events in the brain or nervous system and cannot themselves cause any effects in the material world.
- erlenmeyer flask — conical container used in laboratory
- exclamation mark — (character) The character "!" with ASCII code 33. Common names: bang; pling; excl (/eks'kl/); shriek; ITU-T: exclamation mark, exclamation point (US). Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; soldier; INTERCAL: spark-spot. The Commonwealth Hackish, "pling", is common among Acorn Archimedes owners. Bang is more common in the USA. The occasional CMU usage, "shriek", is also used by APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists. Exclamation mark is used in C and elsewhere as the logical negation operation (NOT).
- exemplifications — Plural form of exemplification.
- exemption clause — a clause in a contract that exempts one party from liability for something
- exhaust manifold — An exhaust manifold is a heat-resistant tube that connects an engine to an exhaust pipe.
- exponential-time — (complexity) The set or property of problems which can be solved by an exponential-time algorithm but for which no polynomial-time algorithm is known.
- extemporaneously — In an extemporaneous manner; without prior preparation or planning.
- extrachromosomal — Happening outside a chromosome.
- extradimensional — (jargon, science fiction) Originating outside the known physical reality of the universe.
- family allowance — a regular government payment to the parents of children up to a certain age
- family of curves — a collection of curves whose equations differ only by values assigned a parameter or parameters.
- farewell to arms — a novel (1929) by Ernest Hemingway.
- feme-sole trader — a married woman who is entitled to carry on business on her own account and responsibility, independently of her husband.
- fertile material — material which can be converted into a fissile material by a neutron-induced nuclear reaction, as uranium-238 or thorium-232
- firewall machine — (networking, security) A dedicated gateway server with special security precautions on it, used to service external connections (typically from the public Internet). The firewall machine protects servers and networks hidden behind it from crackers. The typical firewall is an inexpensive microprocessor-based Unix machine with no critical data, with public network ports on it, but just one carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special precautions may include threat monitoring, call-back, and even a complete iron box keyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. The type of network and security environment of a firewall machine is often called a De-Militarised Zone (DMZ). It may contain other servers such as e-mail servers or proxy gateways - machines that need to be publicly accessible but also need some access to internal systems. Also known as a (Venus) flytrap after the insect-eating plant.
- flamborough head — a chalk promontory in NE England, on the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire
- flame cultivator — an implement that kills weeds by scorching them with a directed flow of flaming gas.
- flash eliminator — a device fitted to the muzzle of a firearm to reduce the flash made by the ignited propellant gases
- flashbulb memory — the clear recollections that a person may have of the circumstances associated with a dramatic event
- flat-felled seam — a seam on the face of a garment, as on the outside of the legs of blue jeans, made by overlapping or interlocking one seam allowance with the other and top-stitching them together onto the garment with two parallel rows of stitches.
- fluorescent lamp — a tubular electric discharge lamp in which light is produced by the fluorescence of phosphors coating the inside of the tube.