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22-letter words containing a, i, r, t, n, s

  • lynx real-time systems — A company in Los Gatos, California who distribute LynxOS. E-mail: <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>. Address: 16780 Lark Avenue, Los Gatos, CA 95030, USA. Telephone:: +1 (408) 354 7770, +1 (800) 255 LYNX. Fax: +1 (408) 354 7085.
  • magnetic pole strength — Electricity. a measure of the force exerted by one face of a magnet on a face of another magnet when both magnets are represented by equal and opposite poles. Symbol: m.
  • make a beeline for sth — If you make a beeline for a place, you go to it as quickly and directly as possible.
  • make/prove one's point — If you make your point or prove your point, you prove that something is true, either by arguing about it or by your actions or behaviour.
  • manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
  • master warrant officer — a noncommissioned officer in the Canadian forces junior to a chief warrant officer
  • matrix math extensions — (processor)   (MMX) (NOT an acronym for "MultiMedia eXtension", according to Intel, but an Intel brand name) A set of 57 extra instructions built into some versions of Intel's Pentium microprocessors for supporting SIMD operations on multimedia and communications data types. MMX-enhanced processors are due to be released early in 1997. They will be fully compatible with previous Intel processors and software but software will only benefit if it is written to use the new instructions. They can handle many common multimedia operations, such as digital signal processing, normally handled by a separate sound card or video card.
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • middle-distance runner — someone who runs races of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
  • molecular distillation — a vacuum distillation in which the molecules of the distillate reach the condenser before colliding with one another.
  • mother carey's chicken — any of various small petrels, especially the stormy petrel, Oceanites oceanicus.
  • mountain standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, seven hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • name service switching — Domain Name System
  • national semiconductor — (company)   A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
  • natural classification — classification of organisms according to relationships based on descent from a common ancestor
  • netherlands new guinea — a former name of Irian Jaya.
  • no room to swing a cat — If you say 'There's no room to swing a cat' or 'You can't swing a cat', you mean that the place you are talking about is very small or crowded.
  • nominal semidestructor — (abuse)   Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
  • non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
  • non-restrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • nonrepresentationalism — not resembling or portraying any object in physical nature: a nonrepresentational painting.
  • nonspecular reflection — the diffuse reflection of sound or light waves
  • north rhine-westphalia — a state in W Germany; formerly a part of Rhine province. 13,154 sq. mi. (34,070 sq. km). Capital: Düsseldorf.
  • oak processionary moth — a moth, (Thaumetopoea processionea), of the family Thaumetopoeidae, the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
  • occupational therapist — professional who assists with rehabilitation
  • oceanic whitetip shark — whitetip shark (def 2).
  • of the first magnitude — of the greatest importance
  • on a shoestring budget — with very little money to spend
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • open-market operations — the purchase and sale on the open market of government securities by the Bank of England for the purpose of regulating the supply of money and credit to the economy
  • operating instructions — instructions on how to use something (such an electrical appliance, etc)
  • operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
  • operational data store — (database)   (ODS) A group of integrated databases designed to support the monitoring of operations. Unlike function oriented databases, an ODS contains subject-oriented, dynamic, current enterprise-wide information that is continually updated to show the current state of operations.
  • outside awareness port — (humour)   (OAP) A humorous IBM term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the GUI kind.
  • over-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
  • parallel server option — Oracle Parallel Server
  • parker morris standard — (in Britain) a set of minimum criteria for good housing construction, design, and facilities, recommended by the 1961 report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Parker Morris. Subsequent governments have urged private and local authority house-builders to achieve these standards
  • partnerships for peace — a subsidiary organization of NATO, comprising former Warsaw Pact countries that wish to be allied with NATO but have not been granted full NATO membership: established in 1994
  • peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
  • percussive maintenance — (jargon)   The fine art of whacking a device to get it working, possibly using a fine adjuster.
  • personal rapid transit — a short system of small, self-propelled, automated, rubber-tired vehicles that usually run on elevated concrete tracks and allow a passenger a limited selection of routes, as in an amusement park or at an airport. Abbreviation: PRT.
  • personal relationships — relationships between people, especially those between friends, lovers and family members
  • phase alternating line — (television)   (PAL) The video signal format used in the UK [where else?]. PAL uses Amplitude Modulation for the video information, and Frequency Modulation for the audio information. The phase of the colour subcarrier is reversed on alternate lines which (together with the use of a delay line) allows the receiver to cancel any phase errors introduced in the path between the studio and the end-user's receiver. Such phase errors are quite common and would cause the displayed colours to shift in hue. The US equivalent, NTSC, does not have this feature and thus requires a user control to correct for transmission phase errors, hence the mis-expansion "Never Twice the Same Colour".
  • planck's radiation law — the law that energy associated with electromagnetic radiation, as light, is composed of discrete quanta of energy, each quantum equal to Planck's constant times the corresponding frequency of the radiation: the fundamental law of quantum mechanics.
  • planetary transmission — A planetary transmission is a special form of geared drive in which the input and output shafts are on the same axis.
  • plastic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (PPGA) The package used for certain Intel Celeron processors. PPGA processors fit into Socket 370 motherboard sockets. The Plastic Pin Grid Array packaging is similar to that used on Pentium processors. The silicon core is covered by a heat slug that faces down toward the motherboard. The Celeron 300A to the 533 use a PPGA package. The Celeron 566 onward use a FC-PGA package. Celeron processors are also available in Slot 1 SEPP packaging.
  • play one's cards right — a usually rectangular piece of stiff paper, thin pasteboard, or plastic for various uses, as to write information on or printed as a means of identifying the holder: a 3″ × 5″ file card; a membership card.
  • point of sale terminal — the store, dealer, or other retail outlet where an item is sold: from manufacturer to point-of-sale.
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