0%

21-letter words containing a, n, i, m

  • multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
  • multiplication factor — the ratio of the number of neutrons in a generation to the number of neutrons in the previous generation: when the multiplication factor is equal to or greater than one, a chain reaction is possible
  • municipal corporation — a city, town, village, etc., that operates under a corporate charter granted by the state.
  • muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
  • myocardial infarction — heart attack. Abbreviation: MI.
  • negative amortization — the increase of the principal of a loan by the amount by which periodic loan payments fall short of the interest due, usually as a result of an increase in the interest rate after the loan has begun.
  • negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
  • network administrator — (job)   A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • nine-banded armadillo — an armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, of the southern U.S. to Argentina, having nine hinged bands of bony plates, the female of which usually gives birth to quadruplets that are always of the same sex.
  • nominative of address — a noun naming the person to whom one is speaking.
  • non-maintainer upload — (operating system)   (NMU) A release of a Debian package by someone other than its usual maintainer. E.g. "The bug was fixed in a recent NMU."
  • non-repeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
  • nonexamination course — a course of study in which there are no examinations
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • of time and the river — a novel (1935) by Thomas Wolfe.
  • oil-in-water emulsion — An oil-in-water emulsion is a mixture in which an oily medicine is dispersed in water or other liquid.
  • olympic national park — a national park in NW Washington. 1323 sq. mi. (3425 sq. km).
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • operational amplifier — a high-gain, high-input impedance amplifier, usually an integrated circuit, that can perform mathematical operations when suitably wired.
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • ophthalmia neonatorum — inflammation of the eyes of a newborn child due to an infectious disease, as gonorrhea, contracted during birth from the infected mother.
  • pacific standard time — See under standard time.
  • parliamentary inquiry — a question asked of the presiding officer of a parliament in relation to parliamentary law
  • partial reinforcement — the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it
  • peephole optimisation — (compiler)   A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
  • peephole optimization — peephole optimisation
  • pentamethylenediamine — cadaverine.
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • performance indicator — a quantitative or qualitative measurement, or any other criterion, by which the performance, efficiency, achievement, etc of a person or organization can be assessed, often by comparison with an agreed standard or target
  • performance-enhancing — noting or relating to a drug or other substance used to improve one's performance in a sport or other activity requiring strength, stamina, etc.: The use of performance-enhancing steroids by athletes is banned.
  • personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
  • pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
  • pomp and circumstance — ceremony
  • postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
  • potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
  • potassium thiocyanate — a colorless, crystalline, hygroscopic, water-soluble solid, KSCN, used chiefly in the manufacture of chemicals, dyes, and drugs.
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • premature ejaculation — a male psychosexual disorder in which ejaculation occurs soon after the commencement of sexual intercourse.
  • premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
  • prince rupert's metal — a brass composed of from about 60 to 85 percent copper and about 15 to 40 percent zinc, used to imitate gold.
  • privacy enhanced mail —
  • production department — the department of a business or organization responsible for manufacturing products
  • profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
  • propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
  • protest demonstration — a manifestation of protest by public rally, parade, etc
  • psychomotor agitation — agitation (def 3).
  • psychomotor-agitation — the act or process of agitating; state of being agitated: She left in great agitation.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?