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23-letter words containing a, m, i, l

  • constitutional monarchy — a monarchy governed according to a constitution that limits and defines the powers of the sovereign
  • cordillera de talamanca — a mountain range running SE from central Costa Rica to W Panama.
  • criminal justice system — the combination of courts and legal processes that deal with crime
  • criminal records bureau — (in England and Wales) a service offering employers and voluntary organizations access to police, health, and education records
  • cryptococcal meningitis — a form of meningitis resulting from opportunistic infection by a cryptococcus fungus, occurring in persons who are immunodeficient.
  • cut sb's umbilical cord — If you say that one person, organization, or country has cut its umbilical cord with another, you mean that they have done something that makes them more independent.
  • cyclohexylsulfamic acid — cyclamic acid.
  • cylinder vacuum cleaner — a type of vacuum cleaner in which dirt, dust, etc, is sucked into a hard cylinder rather than a bag
  • dark-field illumination — illumination of the field of a microscope from the side so that the specimen is viewed against a dark background
  • data terminal equipment — (communications, hardware)   (DTE) A device which acts as the source and/or destination of data and which controls the communication channel. DTE includes terminals, computers, protocol converters, and multiplexors. DTE is usually connected via an EIA-232 serial line to Data Communication Equipment (DCE), typically a modem. It is necessary to distinguish these two types of device because their connectors must be wired differently if a "straight-through" cable (pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2 etc.) is to be used. DTE should have a male connector and should transmit on pin three and receive on pin two. It is a curious fact that many modems are actually "DTE" according to the original standard.
  • de-compartmentalization — to divide into categories or compartments.
  • debugging an empty file — (programming, humour)   A humourous definition of programming that considers a complete absence of any code as a bug to be fixed.
  • dialectical materialism — the economic, political, and philosophical system of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that combines traditional materialism and Hegelian dialectic
  • diamondback rattlesnake — either of two large, highly venomous rattlesnakes of the genus Crotalus, having diamond-shaped markings on the back.
  • dichlorodifluoromethane — a colourless nonflammable gas easily liquefied by pressure: used as a propellant in aerosols and fire extinguishers and as a refrigerant. Formula: CCl2F2
  • differentiable manifold — a manifold having the property that any two overlapping open sets are homeomorphic to locally Euclidean spaces whose coordinates are related by differentiable functions, a property with wide applications in mathematical physics and differential geometry.
  • differential compaction — differences in the extent to which sediment is compacted owing to topographic irregularities of the surface on which it is deposited.
  • direct primary election — a preliminary election at which candidates for public office are chosen by direct vote of the people instead of by delegates at a convention: in closed primary elections voters must declare party affiliation and may vote only for candidates of their party
  • discrimination learning — a learning process in which an organism learns to react differently to different stimuli
  • disjunctive normal form — (DNF) A logical formula consisting of a disjunction of conjunctions where no conjunction contains a disjunction. E.g. the DNF of (A or B) and C is (A and C) or (B and C).
  • dissociate oneself from — to deny or repudiate any connection with
  • drop into someone's lap — to cause to be someone's responsibility
  • dual sensory impairment — the condition of being affected by sight and hearing loss
  • electronic mail address — (messaging)   (Usually "e-mail address") The string used to specify the source or destination of an electronic mail message. E.g. "[email protected]". The RFC 822 standard is probably the most widely used on the Internet. X.400 was once used in Europe and Canada. UUCP-style (bang path) addresses or other kinds of source route became virtually extinct in the 1990s. In the example above, "john" is the local part which is the name of a mailbox on the destination computer. If the sender and recipient use the same computer, or the same LAN, for electronic mail then the local part is usually all that is required. If they use different computers, e.g. they work at different companies or use different Internet service providers, then the "host part", e.g. "sales.acme.com" must be appended after an "@". This usually takes the form of a fully qualified domain name or, within a large organisation, it may be just the hostname part, e.g. "sales". The destination computer named by the host part is usually a server of some kind rather than an individual's workstation or PC. The user's mail is stored on the server and read later via client mail software running on the user's computer. Large organisations, such as universities will often set up a global alias directory which maps a simple user name such as "jsmith" to an address which contains more information such as "[email protected]". This hides the detailed knowledge of where the message will be delivered from the sender, making it much easier to redirect mail if a user leaves or moves to a different department for example.
  • eliminative materialism — (in philosophy of mind) the theory that people's common-sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist
  • experimental psychology — the scientific study of the individual behaviour of man and other animals, esp of perception, learning, memory, motor skills, and thinking
  • fear-driven development — (jargon, humour)   When project management adds more pressure (fires someone or something). A play on test-driven development.
  • ferric ammonium oxalate — a green, crystalline, water-soluble, synthetically produced powder, (NH 4) 3 Fe(C 2 O 4) 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of blueprint paper.
  • fifth marquis lansdowne — Henry Charles Keith, 5th Marquis of Lansdowne, Lansdowne, 5th Marquis of.
  • finite element analysis — Finite element analysis is a type of computer-based analysis which calculates variations of quantities such as temperature or stress in a body by dividing it into small parts with no spaces between them.
  • flow-matic or flowmatic — (Originally B-0) Possibly the first English-like DP language. Developed at Remington Rand in 1958 for the UNIVAC I.
  • frictional unemployment — those people who are in the process of moving from one job to another and who therefore appear in the unemployment statistics collected at any given time
  • functional requirements — (specification)   What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. This term is used at both the user requirements analysis and software requirements specifications phases in the software life-cycle. An example of a non-functional requirement is an initialisation sequence incorporated into the software that is specific to a given customer.
  • fundamental interaction — any of the four basic interactions that occur in nature: the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions
  • galilean transformation — the equations in classical mechanics that relate position and time in two frames of reference that are moving uniformly with respect to each other. Compare inertial system, relativity (def 2).
  • give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
  • grant-maintained school — a school funded directly by central government
  • graphical kernel system — (graphics, standard)   (GKS) The widely recognised standard ANSI X3.124 for graphical input/output. GKS is worked on by the ISO/IEC group JTC1/SC24. It provides applications programmers with standard methods of creating, manipulating, and displaying or printing computer graphics on different types of computer graphics output devices. It provides an abstraction to save programmers from dealing with the detailed capabilities and interfaces of specific hardware. GKS defines a basic two-dimensional graphics system with: uniform input and output primitives; a uniform interface to and from a GKS metafile for storing and transferring graphics information. It supports a wide range of graphics output devices including such as printers, plotters, vector graphics devices, storage tubes, refresh displays, raster displays, and microfilm recorders.
  • guest relations manager — A guest relations manager at a hotel is responsible for the relationships that the hotel has with its guests and the way in which it treats them.
  • guillain-barre syndrome — an uncommon, usually self-limited form of polyneuritis, occurring after a viral illness or immunization and manifested by loss of muscle strength, loss of or altered sensation and sometimes paralysis.
  • hate-driven development — (programming, humour)   A play on test-driven development for use when a piece of code is not necessarily broken but you hate the way it is written so much that you feel compelled to rewrite it.
  • health maintenance plan — A health maintenance plan is a health insurance policy that provides preventive care like vaccinations, doctor checkups, and screenings, for a prepaid fee.
  • higher national diploma — a work-related higher education qualification, taking two years full-time.
  • hold on like grim death — to hold very firmly or resolutely
  • human leukocyte antigen — HLA.
  • hunter-killer submarine — a submarine designed and equipped to pursue and destroy enemy craft
  • hypobetalipoproteinemia — (pathology) A low level of betalipoprotein (low-density lipoprotein) in the bloodstream.
  • hypothetical imperative — (esp in the moral philosophy of Kant) any conditional rule of action, concerned with means and ends rather than with duty for its own sake
  • immunological tolerance — the absence of antibody production in response to the presence of antigens, usually as a result of previous exposure to the antigens
  • implementation language — (language)   (IMP) An extension of B with floating-point operations, developed by W. Davidsen at General Electric in 1970 for the GE 600. It was also cross-compiled to VAX and Intel 8080.
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