26-letter words containing a, n, m, i, o, t
- most-favored-nation clause — a clause in a commercial treaty or contract by which each signatory agrees to give the other the same treatment that is or will be accorded any other nation.
- multifactorial inheritance — polygenic inheritance.
- mushroom slab construction — beamless reinforced-concrete floor and roof construction employing columns with widely flaring heads having horizontal rings of reinforcement to support the floor or roof slab.
- mutual assured destruction — a U.S. doctrine of reciprocal deterrence resting on the U.S. and Soviet Union each being able to inflict unacceptable damage on the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.
- national merit scholarship — one of some 6000 college scholarships awarded annually since 1956, by the nonprofit, grant-supported National Merit Scholarship Corporation, to high-school students (National Merit Scholars) on the basis of scholastic record, personal character, and score on a test administered nationally.
- neither more nor less than — simply
- network information center — (NIC) A body that provides information, assistance and services to network users. These will typically include telephone and electronic mail "help desk" type services for users and network information services such as hostnames and addresses which are accessed automatically by computers using some client-server protocol (usually Sun's NIS). See also Network Operations Center.
- network information system — (spelling) A mis-expansion of NIS.
- new business profit margin — A new business profit margin is a system used by insurers to measure the cost of and profit from writing new policies.
- newfoundland standard time — one of the standard times used in Canada, three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- nickel-in-the-slot machine — a machine that operates if you put a nickel in its slot
- nondeterministic automaton — (theory) (Or "probabilistic automaton") An automaton in which there are several possible actions (outputs and next states) at each state of the computation such that the overall course of the computation is not completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. See also nondeterministic Turing Machine.
- nuclear magnetic resonance — the selective absorption of electromagnetic radiation by an atomic nucleus in the presence of a strong, static, magnetic field: used in research and in medicine to monitor tissue metabolism and to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells. Abbreviation: NMR.
- official production system — (language) (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
- open document architecture — (standard) (ODA) ISO standard (8613) for describing documents. It allows text, graphics, and facsimile documents to be transferred between different systems.
- period-luminosity relation — the relationship between the period of light variation and of the absolute magnitude of Cepheid variable stars.
- plain old telephone system — Public Switched Telephone Network
- pokémon exception handling — (programming, humour) A humourous term for a try-catch exception handling construct with no constraint on which exceptions will be caught, for when you just "Gotta Catch 'Em All." (a slogan used in the Pokémon media empire). Pokémon is a trademark of the Pokémon Company of Japan.
- political action committee — A political action committee is an organization which campaigns for particular political policies, and that gives money to political parties or candidates who support those policies. The abbreviation PAC is also used.
- portable forth environment — (language) (PFE) A highly portable Forth development system based on the ANSI standard for Forth, by Dirk-Uwe Zoller of FHT, Mannheim, Germany. PFE aims to be correct, complete, usable, and simple but it isn't optimised for speed. It supports all dpANS word sets. It runs on Linux, RS/6000, and HP-UX. E-mail: Guido Draheim <[email protected]>.
- post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
- postprandial thermogenesis — the rate at which food is broken down after a meal and used by your body
- professional office system — (messaging) (PROFS) An office messaging system from IBM, used worldwide, mainly on IBM mainframes.
- pulse-amplitude modulation — modulation of the amplitude of a train of electric pulses used to carry signals (pulse carrier) Abbreviation: PAM.
- put a bug in someone's ear — Also called true bug, hemipteran, hemipteron. a hemipterous insect.
- quite apart from something — used to indicate that you are aware of one aspect of a situation, but that you are going to focus on another aspect
- real-time operating system — (operating system) (RTOS) Any operating system where interrupts are guaranteed to be handled within a certain specified maximum time, thereby making it suitable for control of hardware in embedded systems and other time-critical applications. RTOS is not a specific product but a class of operating systems.
- recombinant dna technology — any of various techniques for separating and recombining segments of DNA or genes, often employing a restriction enzyme to cut a gene from a donor organism and inserting it into a plasmid or viral DNA for transplantation into a host organism, where the gene causes the production of a desired substance either for harvesting or for the benefit of the host organism itself.
- record management services — (operating system) (RMS) Procedures in the VMS operating system that programs call to process files and records within files. RMS allows programs to issue GET and PUT requests at the record level (record I/O) as well as read and write blocks (block I/O). VMS RMS is an integral part of the system software; its procedures run in executive mode.
- recreation room (or hall) — a room, as in a home (or a public hall), equipped for amusement and relaxation or for social activities
- remembrance of things past — a novel (1913–27) by Marcel Proust.
- renegotiable-rate mortgage — a type of home mortgage for which monthly payments stay constant for a term, usually of three to five years, and the interest rate is renegotiated at the end of every such term until the loan is paid off. Abbreviation: RRM.
- replacement cost insurance — Replacement cost insurance is insurance in which the cost of replacing property is calculated without a reduction for depreciation.
- retained object complement — an object complement that is kept in its predicative position following the verb when the verb is transformed into the passive voice, as genius in He was considered a genius from (They) considered him a genius.
- reticuloendothelial system — the aggregate of the phagocytic cells, including certain cells of the bone marrow, lymphatic system, liver, and spleen, that have reticular and endothelial characteristics and function in the immune system's defense against foreign bodies. Abbreviation: RES.
- ritz combination principle — the principle that the frequencies of lines in atomic spectra can be represented as differences of a smaller number of terms, all characteristic of the emitting system, interpreted in quantum theory as the emission of exactly one photon in a transition between energy levels.
- sangre de cristo mountains — a mountain range in S Colorado and N New Mexico: part of the Rocky Mountains. Highest peak: Blanca Peak, 4364 m (14 317 ft)
- scintillation spectrometer — a scintillation counter adapted for measuring the energy distribution of particles emitted in radioactive processes.
- search engine optimization — the process of adjusting the content, structure, etc, of a website so that it will be displayed prominently by a search engine
- set someone's mind at rest — to reassure someone or settle someone's mind
- simple algebraic extension — a simple extension in which the specified element is a root of an algebraic equation in the given field.
- state of the union message — an annual message to Congress in which the president reports on the state of the nation and outlines a legislative program: required by the Constitution (Article II, Section 3). Abbreviation: SOTU.
- statistical-thermodynamics — the science that deals with average properties of the molecules, atoms, or elementary particles in random motion in a system of many such particles and relates these properties to the thermodynamic and other macroscopic properties of the system.
- sth will take some beating — If you say that something will take some beating, you mean that it is very good and it is unlikely that anything better will be done or made.
- symbionese liberation army — a group of urban guerrillas, active in the early 1970s in the U.S.
- systematic desensitization — a treatment of phobias in which the patient while relaxed is exposed, often only in imagination, to progressively more frightening aspects of the phobia
- tabulating machine company — (company) The company founded in 1896 by Herman Hollerith to exploit his invention of the punched card. It became part of IBM in 1924.
- take someone's word for it — to accept or believe what someone says
- take something for granted — If you take something for granted, you believe that it is true or accept it as normal without thinking about it.
- take steps to do something — to undertake measures with a view to the attainment of some end