19-letter words containing a, c, h, i, n, s
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- league championship — the competition to become league champions
- macaroni and cheese — pasta with cheese sauce
- machine instruction — (programming) The smallest element of a machine code program.
- machine translation — changing language of a text by computer
- magnetic hysteresis — hysteresis in a ferromagnetic material; the lag in the response of magnetic induction to changes of magnetic intensity.
- male chauvinist pig — male chauvinist.
- manchester encoding — (communications, protocol) A method of transmitting bits which enables the receiver to easily synchronise with the sender. A simple way of signalling bits might be to transmit a high voltage for some period for a 1-bit and a low voltage for a 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High ___ Low |___ Time: -> . . . . . However, when several identical bits are sent in succession, this provides no information to the receiver about when each bit starts and stops. Manchester encoding splits each bit period into two, and ensures that there is always a transition between the signal levels in the middle of each bit. This allows the receiver to synchronise with the sender. In normal Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is transmitted with a high voltage in the first period, and a low voltage in the second, and vice verse for the 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High Low || |_| || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . In Differential Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal equal to the last half of the previous bit's signal and a 0-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal opposite to the last half of the previous bit's signal. That is, a zero bit is indicated by a transition at the beginning of the bit. Like normal Manchester encoding, there is always a transition in the middle of the transmission of the bit. Differential Manchester Encoding Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High __ Low |_| || || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . With each bit period half as long, twice as much bandwidth is required when using either of the Manchester encoding schemes.
- manned space flight — space travel in vehicles with a human crew
- maraschino cherries — cherries in a syrup flavored with maraschino or, now usually, imitation maraschino
- matthias i corvinus — ?1440–90, king of Hungary (1458–90): built up the most powerful kingdom in Central Europe. A patron of Renaissance art, he founded the Corvina library, one of the finest in Europe
- mechanical scanning — Electronics. a technique for varying the sector covered by a transmitting or receiving antenna by rotating it.
- meningoencephalitis — Inflammation of the membranes of the brain and the adjoining cerebral tissue.
- miniature schnauzer — one of a German breed of sturdily built terriers resembling a smaller version of the standard schnauzer, having a wiry, pepper-and-salt, black, or black-and-silver coat, a rectangular head, bushy whiskers, and a docked tail, and originally developed as a farm dog but now raised primarily as a pet.
- mischaracterization — The act of characterizing something in an inaccurate or misleading way.
- moses-in-the-cradle — a plant, Rhoeo spathacea, native to the West Indies and Central America, having leaves with purple undersides and white flowers enclosed in a boat-shaped envelope formed by two bracts.
- motivation research — the application of the knowledge and techniques of the social sciences, especially psychology and sociology, to understanding consumer attitudes and behavior: used as a guide in advertising and marketing.
- national characters — (character) Characters with accents and other diacritical marks that are used in certain written languages (that are based on the Roman alphabet) but not in others, particularly not in English. A standard list is ISO Latin 1.
- neuropsychodynamics — The theoretical synthesis of neuroscience and psychodynamics.
- new zealand spinach — a plant, Tetragonia tetragonioides, of warm regions, cultivated for its edible leaves, eaten as a vegetable.
- newtonian mechanics — the branch of mechanics that is based on Newton's laws of motion and that is applicable to systems that are so large that Planck's constant can be regarded as negligibly small (distinguished from quantum mechanics).
- no strings attached — without conditions
- northwest ordinance — the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.
- old church slavonic — the oldest attested Slavic language, an ecclesiastical language written first by Cyril and Methodius in a Bible translation of the 9th century and continued in use for about two centuries. It represents the South Slavic, Bulgarian dialect of 9th-century Salonika with considerable addition of other South and West Slavic elements. Abbreviation: OCS.
- old spanish customs — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- operations research — the analysis, usually involving mathematical treatment, of a process, problem, or operation to determine its purpose and effectiveness and to gain maximum efficiency.
- orthopaedic surgeon — a surgeon specializing in the branch of surgery concerned with disorders of the spine and joints and the repair of deformities of these parts
- palisade parenchyma — the upper layer of ground tissue in a leaf, consisting of elongated cells beneath and perpendicular to the upper epidermis and constituting the primary area of photosynthesis.
- parachute spinnaker — a very large spinnaker used on a racing yacht.
- phacoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- phakoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- photoreconnaissance — reconnaissance using aerial photography.
- physical addressing — (networking) The low level addressing scheme used on Ethernet. The 48-bit destination Ethernet address in a packet is compared with the receiving node's Ethernet address. Compare IP address.
- physical impairment — A physical impairment is a condition in which a part of a person's body is damaged or is not working properly.
- physical sequential — (file format) (PS, QSAM, Queued Sequential Access Method) The simplest data set on an IBM mainframe. Sequential files can only be read or written from the beginning: they do not support random access.
- physician assistant — a person trained and certified to perform various medical procedures under the supervision of a physician
- pinwheel escapement — a clock escapement in which two pallets, usually of unequal length, alternately engage and release pins set on the escape wheel perpendicular to its plane of rotation.
- postsynchronization — the process of adding sound, such as dubbing, to a film or video after shooting or videotaping is completed
- prescription charge — a charge, set by the government, to be paid by a patient for medicines
- professional school — a postgraduate school or college which trains students for a particular profession
- psychological novel — a novel that focuses on the complex mental and emotional lives of its characters and explores the various levels of mental activity.
- psychotechnological — of or relating to psychotechnology
- put sth into action — If you put an idea or policy into action, you begin to use it or cause it to operate.
- quick-change artist — a person adept at changing from one thing to another, as an entertainer who changes costumes quickly during a performance.
- raise one's hackles — one of the long, slender feathers on the neck or saddle of certain birds, as the domestic rooster, much used in making artificial flies for anglers.
- rayleigh scattering — the scattering of light by particles that are very small in relation to the wavelength of the light, and in which the intensity of the scattered light varies inversely with the fourth power of the wavelength.
- regular icosahedron — an icosahedron in which each of the faces is an equilateral triangle
- releasing mechanism — a hypothetical control complex in the central nervous system of animals that triggers the appropriate behavioral response to a releaser.
- resorcinolphthalein — fluorescein.
- rhetorical question — a question asked solely to produce an effect or to make an assertion and not to elicit a reply, as “What is so rare as a day in June?”.