20-letter words containing a, l, t, c, i
- magnetic inclination — to plunge (something, as a cloth or sponge) temporarily into a liquid, so as to moisten it, dye it, or cause it to take up some of the liquid: He dipped the brush into the paint bucket.
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- material equivalence — equivalence (def 4b).
- material implication — equivalence (def 4a).
- material-equivalence — the state or fact of being equivalent; equality in value, force, significance, etc.
- mechanical advantage — the ratio of output force to the input force applied to a mechanism.
- media access control — (networking) (MAC) The lower sublayer of the OSI data link layer. The interface between a node's Logical Link Control and the network's physical layer. The MAC differs for various physical media. See also MAC Address, Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, token ring.
- medical practitioner — doctor
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- menstrual extraction — an abortion procedure involving suction aspiration of the uterine contents early in gestation, before the first missed menstrual period: sometimes performed later.
- meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
- microcrystalline wax — Microcrystalline wax is a wax used as a stiffening agent and as a coating agent for tablets and capsules.
- middle-distance race — a race of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- missionary apostolic — an honorary title conferred by the pope on certain missionaries.
- mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- multiple inheritance — (programming) In object-oriented programming, the possibility that a class may have more than one direct superclass in the class hierarchy. The opposite is single inheritance.
- multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- multistorey car park — a car park consisting of several levels
- naturalistic fallacy — the supposed fallacy of inferring evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises
- neapolitan ice cream — variously flavored and colored ice cream and ice mixtures frozen in layers.
- negative electricity — the electricity present in a body or substance that has an excess of electrons, as the electricity developed on a resin when rubbed with flannel.
- net national product — the gross national product less allowance for depreciation of capital goods. Abbreviation: NNP.
- neuropsychiatrically — In terms of neuropsychiatry.
- neutral interconnect — Network infrastructure where network service providers can freely exchange traffic without policy restrictions. Examples are the GIX (Global Internet Exchange) at MAE-East (A Metropolitan Area Ethernet around Washington), and the Ebone (European Backbone). There is currently (November 1993) no UK Neutral Interconnect.
- nickel tetracarbonyl — nickel carbonyl.
- no lack of something — If you say there is no lack of something, you are emphasizing that there is a great deal of it.
- non-sensationalistic — subject matter, language, or style producing or designed to produce startling or thrilling impressions or to excite and please vulgar taste.
- nonaccidental injury — damage, such as a bruise, burn, or fracture, deliberately inflicted on a child or an old person
- noncatalytic reactor — A noncatalytic reactor is a reactor in which no catalyst is used.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- nonsense correlation — a correlation supported by data but having no basis in reality, as between incidence of the common cold and ownership of televisions
- normal magnification — the magnification produced by a telescope or microscope such that the diameter of the exit pupil of the instrument is equal to the diameter of the pupil of the eye.
- north american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas fault and Aleutian Trench.
- north atlantic drift — an ocean current flowing NE toward the British Isles, formed by the convergence of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current SE of Newfoundland.
- north celestial pole — the point of intersection of the earth's extended axis and the northern half of the celestial sphere, lying about 1° from Polaris
- north richland hills — a town in N Texas.
- objective relativism — the doctrine that knowledge of real objects is relative to the individual.
- occupational disease — Also called industrial disease. a disease caused by the conditions or hazards of a particular occupation.
- occupational pension — a pension scheme provided for the members of a particular occupation or by a specific employer or group of employers
- occupational therapy — a form of therapy in which patients are encouraged to engage in vocational tasks or expressive activities, as art or dance, usually in a social setting.
- of no/little account — If you say that something is of no account or of little account, you mean that it is very unimportant and is not worth considering.
- official secrets act — law: legislation protecting state secret
- olfactory anesthesia — absence or loss of the sense of smell.
- omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
- ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.