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 in the heat of the moment — without pausing to think 
 
 in the palm of one's hand — If you have someone or something in the palm of your hand, you have control over them. 
 
 international match point — a unit of scoring in contract bridge tournaments held in Europe. Abbreviation: IMP. 
 
 interstate highway system — a network of U.S. highways connecting the 48 contiguous states and most of the cities with populations above 50,000, begun in the 1950s and estimated to carry about a fifth of the nation's traffic. 
 
 johnniac open shop system — (language)   (JOSS) An early, simple, interactive calculator language developed by Charles L. Baker at Rand in 1964. There were two versions: JOSS I and JOSS II. 
 
 joint technical committee — (standard, body)   (JTC) A standards body straddling ISO and IEC. 
 
 khakass autonomous region — an autonomous region in the Russian Federation, in S Siberia. 19,161 sq. mi. (49,627 sq. km). Capital: Abakan. 
 
 magnetic character reader — a device that automatically scans and interprets characters printed with magnetic ink. It operates by the process of magnetic character recognition 
 
 magnetohydromagnetic wave — Physics. Alfvén wave. 
 
 maintenance of membership — an arrangement or agreement between an employer and a labor union by which employees who are members of the union at the time the agreement is made, or who subsequently join, must either remain members until the agreement expires, or be discharged. 
 
 make a thing about/out of — If you make a thing of something or make a thing about it, you talk about it or do it in an exaggerated way, so that it seems much more important than it really is. 
 
 make bricks without straw — a block of clay hardened by drying in the sun or burning in a kiln, and used for building, paving, etc.: traditionally, in the U.S., a rectangle 2.25 × 3.75 × 8 inches (5.7 × 9.5 × 20.3 cm), red, brown, or yellow in color. 
 
 make short work of sb/sth — If you make short work of someone or something, you deal with them or defeat them very quickly. 
 
 massachusetts bay company — a company, chartered in England in 1629 to establish a colony on Massachusetts Bay, that founded Boston in 1630. 
 
 massacre of the innocents — the slaughter of all the young male children of Bethlehem at Herod's command in an attempt to destroy Jesus (Matthew 2:16–18) 
 
 medical officer of health — a person appointed by a local or national authority to be in charge of its health policy 
 
 melanesian pidgin english — Neo-Melanesian. 
 
 metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1). 
 
 methylrosaniline chloride — gentian violet. 
 
 miguel hidalgo y costilla — Miguel  [mee-gel] /miˈgɛl/ (Show IPA), 1753–1811, Mexican priest, patriot, and revolutionist. 
 
 non-algorithmic procedure — heuristic 
 
 on the big/small etc side — If you say that something is on the small side, you are saying politely that you think it is slightly too small. If you say that someone is on the young side, you are saying politely that you think they are slightly too young. 
 
 on the horns of a dilemma — one of the bony, permanent, hollow paired growths, often curved and pointed, that project from the upper part of the head of certain ungulate mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, or antelopes. 
 
 peripheral nervous system — the portion of the nervous system lying outside the brain and spinal cord. 
 
 petropavlovsk-kamchatskiy — seaport in E Asian Russia, on Kamchatka Peninsula: pop. 210,000 
 
 pharmacotherapeutic group — Drugs and agents are categorized into pharmacotherapeutic groups based on which diseases they are designed to treat. 
 
 phase contrast microscope — a microscope that utilizes the phase differences of light rays transmitted by different portions of an object to create an image in which the details of the object are distinct despite their near-uniformity of refractive index. 
 
 phase-contrast microscope — a microscope that utilizes the phase differences of light rays transmitted by different portions of an object to create an image in which the details of the object are distinct despite their near-uniformity of refractive index. 
 
 play into someone's hands — a dramatic composition or piece; drama. 
 
 poacher turned gamekeeper — someone whose occupation or behaviour is the opposite of what it previously was, such as a burglar who now advises on home security 
 
 polymerase chain reaction — a technique in which a known DNA sequence is synthesized at high temperatures by means of a polymerase, producing millions of copies for statistical analysis: used in DNA fingerprinting, in detecting minute quantities of cancer cells, etc. 
 
 polynomial-time algorithm — (complexity)   A known algorithm (or Turing Machine) that is guaranteed to terminate within a number of steps which is a polynomial function of the size of the problem. See also computational complexity, exponential time, nondeterministic polynomial-time (NP), NP-complete. 
 
 put sb/sth/swh on the map — If you say that someone or something put a person, thing, or place on the map, you approve of the fact that they made it become well-known and important. 
 
 ram down someone's throat — the passage from the mouth to the stomach or to the lungs, including the pharynx, esophagus, larynx, and trachea. 
 
 ram's-head lady's-slipper — a rare, slender-stemmed orchid, Cypripedium arietinum, of northeastern North America, that has crimson-streaked, whitish-lipped flowers with purple sepals and grows in moist soil. 
 
 rate monotonic scheduling — (algorithm)   A means of scheduling the time allocated to periodic hard-deadline real-time users of a resource. The users are assigned priorities such that a shorter fixed period between deadlines is associated with a higher priority. Rate monotonic scheduling provides a low-overhead, reasonably resource-efficient means of guaranteeing that all users will meet their deadlines provided that certain analytical equations are satisfied during the system design. It avoids the design complexity of time-line scheduling and the overhead of dynamic approaches such as earliest-deadline scheduling. 
 
 read someone the riot act — If someone in authority reads you the riot act, they tell you that you will be punished unless you start behaving properly. 
 
 rehabilitation department — a government department set up after World War II to assist ex-servicemen 
 
 ruby-throated hummingbird — a small hummingbird, Archilochus colubris, the only hummingbird of eastern North America, having metallic-green upper plumage and a bright red throat in the male. 
 
 ruffle someone's feathers — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side. 
 
 saint joseph of arimathea — a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, who obtained the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion and laid it in his own tomb (Matthew 27:57–60). Feast day: Mar 17 or July 31 
 
 sequential parlog machine — (SPM) The virtual machine (and its machine code) for the Parlog logic programming language. 
 
 stretch one's imagination — If you say that something stretches your imagination, you mean that it is good because it makes you think about things that you had not thought about before.