16-letter words containing a, n, g, s
- milk of magnesia — a milky white suspension in water of magnesium hydroxide, Mg (OH) 2 , used as an antacid or laxative.
- minstrel gallery — a gallery in a building meant for use by musicians playing to provide background music or entertainment at a feast or other event
- misappropriating — Present participle of misappropriate.
- misconfiguration — An incorrect or inappropriate configuration.
- misogynistically — In a misogynistic manner.
- missionary ridge — a ridge in NW Georgia and SE Tennessee: Civil War battle 1863.
- misunderstanding — failure to understand correctly; mistake as to meaning or intent.
- modern languages — languages currently spoken
- montagu's blenny — a small blenny, Coryphoblennius galerita, found among rocks in shallow water
- mothering sunday — Laetare Sunday.
- mount washington — a mountain in N New Hampshire, in the White Mountains: the highest peak in the northeast US; noted for extreme weather conditions. Height: 1917 m (6288 ft)
- moving staircase — Also called moving staircase, moving stairway. a continuously moving stairway on an endless loop for carrying passengers up or down.
- munching squares — A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T - see HAKMEM items 146--148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the LISP Machine, have been christened "munching triangles" (try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), "munching w's", and "munching mazes". More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as "munching foos". [This is a good example of the use of the word foo as a metasyntactic variable.]
- mutation testing — (testing) A method to determine test set thoroughness by measuring the extent to which a test set can discriminate the program from slight variants of the program.
- nanotechnologies — Plural form of nanotechnology.
- nanotechnologist — Someone who does research into nanotechnology; someone studying things on the scale of nanometers.
- narcotics charge — a criminal charge or accusation concerning the use or dealing of illegal drugs
- narragansett bay — an inlet of the Atlantic in E Rhode Island. 28 miles (45 km) long.
- national savings — a borrowing programme set up by the UK government, aimed esp at retail investors, and providing bonds, saving certificates, etc
- negative-raising — a rule that moves a negative element out of the complement clause of certain verbs, such as think, into the main clause, as in the derivation of He doesn't think that he'll finish
- neuropathologies — the pathology of the nervous system.
- neuropathologist — A specialist who practices neuropathology.
- new jack (swing) — a style of rhythm-and-blues music blending rap, disco, funk, soul, etc. and characterized by aggressive, boastful, romantic lyrics
- nitrogen mustard — any of the class of poisonous, blistering compounds, as C 5 H 1 1 Cl 2 N, analogous in composition to mustard gas but containing nitrogen instead of sulfur: used in the treatment of cancer and similar diseases; mechlorethamine.
- no hard feelings — If you say ' no hard feelings', you are making an agreement with someone not to be angry or bitter about something.
- nondurable goods — goods that remain usable for, or must be replaced within, a relatively short period of time, as food, apparel, or fabrics
- nonphysiological — of or relating to physiology.
- odds are against — If you say that the odds are against something or someone, you mean that they are unlikely to succeed.
- oil storage tank — a very large industrial container where petroleum is stored
- on its last legs — about to fail
- on the same page — one side of a leaf of something printed or written, as a book, manuscript, or letter.
- operating system — (operating system) (OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running. The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship. Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around the machines on which it runs. Example operating systems include 386BSD, AIX, AOS, Amoeba, Angel, Artemis microkernel, BeOS, Brazil, COS, CP/M, CTSS, Chorus, DACNOS, DOSEXEC 2, GCOS, GEORGE 3, GEOS, ITS, KAOS, Linux, LynxOS, MPV, MS-DOS, MVS, Mach, Macintosh operating system, Microsoft Windows, MINIX, Multics, Multipop-68, Novell NetWare, OS-9, OS/2, Pick, Plan 9, QNX, RISC OS, STING, System V, System/360, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, TRUSIX, TWENEX, TYMCOM-X, Thoth, Unix, VM/CMS, VMS, VRTX, VSTa, VxWorks, WAITS.
- operating-system — the collection of software that directs a computer's operations, controlling and scheduling the execution of other programs, and managing storage, input/output, and communication resources. Abbreviation: OS.
- optical scanning — the process of interpreting data in printed, handwritten, bar-code, or other visual form by a device (optical scanner or reader) that scans and identifies the data.
- orange men's day — July 12, an annual celebration in Northern Ireland and certain cities having a large Irish section, especially Liverpool, to mark both the victory of William III over James II at the Battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690, and the Battle of Augbrim, July 12, 1690.
- organ transplant — an operation in which an organ is transplanted from a donor
- organophosphates — Plural form of organophosphate.
- organophosphorus — Denoting synthetic organic compounds containing phosphorus, especially pesticides and nerve gases of this kind.
- osculating plane — the plane containing the circle of curvature of a point on a given curve.
- otolaryngologist — Otorhinolaryngologist.
- overcompensating — Present participle of overcompensate.
- pacific sturgeon — a dark gray sturgeon, Acipenser transmontanus, inhabiting marine and fresh waters along the northwestern coast of North America, valued as a food and sport fish.
- packet switching — a method of efficient data transmission whereby the initial message is broken into relatively small units, or packets, that are routed independently and subsequently reassembled.
- packet-switching — a method of efficient data transmission whereby the initial message is broken into relatively small units, or packets, that are routed independently and subsequently reassembled.
- parallel sailing — sailing along a parallel of latitude.
- parents' evening — an occasion when the parents of children at a school and their teachers come together (outside normal school hours, in the evening) in order to discuss the progress or work of the children
- parser generator — A program which takes a formal description of a grammar (e.g. in BNF) and outputs source code for a parser which will recognise valid strings obeying that grammar and perform associated actions. Unix's yacc is a well known example.
- passage to india — a novel (1924) by E. M. Forster.
- passenger pigeon — an extinct pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, once found in great numbers in North America, noted for its sustained migratory flights.
- pelagian islands — a group of Italian islands (Lampedusa, Linosa, and Lampione) in the Mediterranean, between Tunisia and Malta. Pop: 6066 (2004 est). Area: about 27 sq km (11 sq miles)