21-letter words containing a, d, o, l, s
- luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
- magnetofluid dynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
- majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
- make one's blood boil — the fluid that circulates in the principal vascular system of human beings and other vertebrates, in humans consisting of plasma in which the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets are suspended.
- mask read-only memory — (storage) (MROM) A kind of ROM in which the memory contents are determined by one of the masks used to manufacture the integrated circuit. MROM can give high storage density (bits per millimeter squared) making it a cheap solution for high volume applications.
- mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.
- medical social worker — a person who works in a hospital and is responsible for offering counselling to patients and their families and ensuring that discharged patients will receive appropriate care in the community
- medium access control — Media Access Control
- meter-kilogram-second — of or relating to the system of units in which the meter, kilogram, and second are the principal units of length, mass, and time. Abbreviation: mks, MKS.
- metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
- modulus of elasticity — the ratio of the stress applied to a body or substance to the resulting strain within the elastic limit
- motherwell and wishaw — a burgh in the Motherwell district, in S Scotland.
- mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
- mucopolysaccharidosis — Any of a group of metabolic disorders caused by the absence or malfunction of lysosomal enzymes needed to break down glycosaminoglycans.
- muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
- nitrosylsulfuric acid — a clear, straw-colored, oily, corrosive liquid, HNO 5 S, used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes.
- noncustodial sentence — a punishment given by a court of law that does not involve a prison term, such as a fine or a restriction order
- northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
- not hold one's breath — If you say that you won't hold your breath, you mean that you do not expect something to happen even though someone has suggested that it might.
- old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- one-dimensional array — (types) An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
- optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
- payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
- peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
- personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
- phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
- piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
- place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
- play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
- prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
- premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
- pro-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse-code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse-time modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier is modulated to produce a series of pulses timed to transmit the amplitude and pitch of a signal. Abbr.: PTM.
- racial discrimination — prejudice based on race
- ralph roister doister — a play (1553?) by Nicholas Udall: the earliest known English comedy.
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- real-estate developer — a person who buys and develops houses, buildings, and land in order to sell them and make a profit from them
- redlegged grasshopper — a migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, of the southwestern and midwestern U.S., having reddish skin on the underside of the hind legs: an agricultural pest.
- residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
- revillagigedo islands — an uninhabited island group belonging to Mexico, in the Pacific Ocean, SSW of the Baja California peninsula: Socorro is the largest island. 320 sq. mi. (830 sq. km).
- safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.