18-letter words containing la
- last in, first out — The expression last in, first out is used to say that the last person who started work in an organization should be the first person to leave it, if fewer people are needed.
- last-in, first-out — an inventory plan based on the assumption that materials constituting manufacturing costs should be carried on the books at the market price of the last lot received. Abbreviation: LIFO. Compare first-in, first-out.
- lateral resistance — resistance to sidewise motion caused by wind pressure, supplied by the immersed portion of a hull of a vessel.
- laugh like a drain — to laugh loudly and coarsely
- laugh out of court — to express mirth, pleasure, derision, or nervousness with an audible, vocal expulsion of air from the lungs that can range from a loud burst of sound to a series of quiet chuckles and is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and bodily movements.
- launching ceremony — a ceremony that celebrates the launch of a ship for the first time into the water
- laurentian plateau — (in Canada) the wide area of Precambrian rock extending west from the Labrador coast to the basin of the Mackenzie and north from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay and the Arctic: rich in minerals
- law of gravitation — a law stating that any two masses attract each other with a force equal to a constant (constant of gravitation) multiplied by the product of the two masses and divided by the square of the distance between them.
- law of mass action — the statement that the rate of a chemical reaction is proportional to the concentrations of the reacting substances.
- law of segregation — the principle, originated by Gregor Mendel, stating that during the production of gametes the two copies of each hereditary factor segregate so that offspring acquire one factor from each parent.
- lawrence of arabia — D(avid) H(erbert) 1885–1930, English novelist.
- lay at the door of — to blame (a person) for
- lay down your arms — If soldiers lay down their arms, they stop fighting and give up their weapons.
- lay it 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 one's hands on — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- laying on of hands — Theology. a rite in which the cleric's hands are placed on the head of a person being confirmed, ordained, or the like.
- leave sth too late — If you leave something too late, you delay doing it so that when you eventually do it, it is useless or ineffective.
- legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
- lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
- light displacement — the weight of a ship with all its permanent equipment, excluding the weight of cargo, persons, ballast, dunnage, and fuel, but usually including the weight of permanent ballast and water used to operate steam machinery.
- liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
- little namaqualand — an arid coastal region in the S part of Namibia, extending into the Cape of Good Hope province of the Republic of South Africa, divided by the Orange River into two regions, one in Namibia (Great Namaqualand) the other in South Africa (Little Namaqualand) inhabited by the Nama.
- looking-glass self — the self-image an individual forms by imagining what others think of his or her behavior and appearance.
- low-level language — computer code
- lower klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- lower palaeolithic — the earliest of the three sections of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 3 million years ago and ending about 70 000 bc with the emergence of Neanderthal man
- maclaurin's series — an infinite sum giving the value of a function f(x) in terms of the derivatives of the function evaluated at zero: f(x) = f(0) + (f′(0)x)/1! + (f″(0)x2)/2! + …
- malignant melanoma — skin cancer
- melville peninsula — a peninsula in N Canada, SE of the Gulf of Boothia. 250 miles (405 km) long.
- mendel's first law — the principle, originated by Gregor Mendel, stating that during the production of gametes the two copies of each hereditary factor segregate so that offspring acquire one factor from each parent.
- mercury delay line — (storage, history) An archaic first-in first-out fixed time period data storage device using acoustic transducers to transmit data as waves in a trough or tube of mercury. EDSAC (Cambridge) and UNIVAC I used delay lines.
- mercury-vapor lamp — a lamp producing a light with a high actinic and ultraviolet content by means of an electric arc in mercury vapor.
- mergui archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the Andaman Sea, off the Tenasserim coast of S Myanmar: mountainous and forested
- methacrylate resin — an acrylic resin formed by polymerizing the esters or amides of methacrylic acid.
- methylated spirits — ethyl alcohol denatured with methyl alcohol for the purpose of preventing its use as an alcoholic beverage.
- mexican fire-plant — a showy plant, Euphorbia heterophylla, of the spurge family, growing in the central U.S. to central South America, having red or mottled red and white bracts.
- microencapsulation — the process of enclosing chemical substances in microcapsules.
- micropalaeontology — the branch of palaeontology concerned with the study of microscopic fossils
- mid-atlantic ridge — a north-south suboceanic ridge in the Atlantic Ocean from Iceland to Antarctica on whose crest are several groups of islands; shown by plate tectonics to be the axis along which North America has split away from Eurasia, and along which South America has split away from Africa.
- misplaced modifier — Grammar. a word, phrase, or clause that seems to refer to or modify an unintended word because of its placement in a sentence, as when young in When young, circuses appeal to all of us.
- modelling language — (language) Possibly a kind of programming language designed for describing models and their behaviour. See also data modelling, object relational model, simulation, UML, VRML.
- modular arithmetic — arithmetic in which numbers that are congruent modulo a given number are treated as the same. Compare congruence (def 2), modulo, modulus (def 2b).
- molecular genetics — a subdivision of genetics concerned with the structure and function of genes at the molecular level.
- molecular medicine — the study of disease or injury at the molecular or cellular level.
- molecular spectrum — the spectrum of light emitted or absorbed by a species of molecule.
- monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
- montgomery village — a city in central Maryland.
- mozilla foundation — (body, web, open source) The body set up by Netscape in January 1998 to coordinate development of the Mozilla browser and to provide a point of contact.
- muscular dystrophy — a hereditary disease characterized by gradual wasting of the muscles with replacement by scar tissue and fat, sometimes also affecting the heart.
- nebular hypothesis — the theory that the solar system evolved from a mass of nebular matter: prominent in the 19th century following its precise formulation by Laplace.