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18-letter words containing a, r, m, o

  • loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
  • lose one's marbles — If you say that someone has lost their marbles, you mean that their ideas or behaviour are very strange, as if they have become insane.
  • low-start mortgage — a mortgage in which interest only is repaid for a fixed period at the outset, to make it more affordable
  • lower klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
  • macro preprocessor — preprocessor
  • macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
  • madeira embroidery — broderie anglaise.
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.
  • magistrates' court — law: handles minor crimes
  • magnesium peroxide — a white, tasteless, water-insoluble powder, MgO 2 , used as an antiseptic and as an oxidizing and bleaching agent.
  • magnetic recording — the process of recording sound or other data on magnetic tape, wire, etc.
  • magnetic resonance — the response by atoms, molecules, or nuclei subjected to a magnetic field to radio waves or other forms of energy: used in medicine for scanning
  • magnetic variation — variation (def 8).
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
  • magnetoelectricity — electricity developed by the action of magnets.
  • magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
  • maison-de-molieres — Comédie Française.
  • major tranquilizer — antipsychotic (def 2).
  • make a beeline for — head directly towards
  • make a practice of — be in the habit of
  • make allowance for — the act of allowing.
  • make an impression — have impact
  • make matters worse — If you say that something makes matters worse, you mean that it makes a difficult situation even more difficult.
  • make no difference — to have no effect; not matter
  • make short work of — exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
  • make someone tired — to annoy or vex someone
  • man-to-man marking — the tactic of assigning a particular player to stay close to a specific member of the opposing team to hamper his or her play
  • mandelbrot, benoit — Benoit Mandelbrot
  • manufactured goods — products made by machine
  • margaret of valois — ("Queen Margot") 1533–1615, 1st wife of Henry IV of France: queen of Navarre; patron of science and literature (daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici).
  • marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.
  • maritime provinces — region in Canada
  • market opportunity — a situation in which a company can meet an unsatisfied customer need before its competitors
  • marriage encounter — a meeting with a person or thing, especially a casual, unexpected, or brief meeting: Our running into each other was merely a chance encounter.
  • marriage of figaro — Italian Le nozze di Figaro. an opera (1786) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
  • marsilius of padua — c1280–1343? Italian scholar and political theorist.
  • master boot record — (operating system, storage)   A special area on a computer's main hard disk that gives the location of the disk's boot block or bootable partition where the operating system is installed.
  • maternity hospital — birthing facility
  • mathematical error — a mistake in a mathematical calculation, etc
  • mato grosso do sul — a state of W central Brazil: formed in 1979 from part of Mato Grosso state. Capital: Campo Grande. Pop: 2 140 624 (2002). Area: 350 548 sq km (135 318 sq miles)
  • may flower compact — an agreement to establish a government, entered into by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620.
  • means of transport — vehicle or system of travel
  • medical dictionary — a specialized dictionary covering terms used in the health professions by doctors, nurses, and others involved in allied health care services. A dictionary with authoritative spellings and definitions is a particularly crucial resource in medicine, where a misspelling or misunderstanding can have unfortunate consequences for people under care. Print dictionaries in this field may be sorted alphabetically or may be categorized according to medical specializations or by the various systems in the body, as the immune system and the respiratory system. The online Medical Dictionary on Dictionary.com allows alphabetical browsing in the combined electronic versions of more than one authoritative medical reference, insuring access to correct spellings, as well as immediate, direct access to a known search term typed into the search box on the site: A medical dictionary reveals that large numbers of medical terms are formed from the same Latin and Greek parts combined and recombined.
  • medical profession — the body of people who work as doctors of medicine
  • medicine bow range — a range of the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming and Colorado. Highest peak, Medicine Bow Peak, 12,014 feet (3662 meters).
  • membrane transport — the process by which physiologically important substances, such as calcium ions, sugars, etc, are conveyed across a biological membrane
  • mental reservation — an unexpressed doubt or qualification about a situation, person, etc.
  • mental retardation — Usually Offensive. a developmental disorder characterized in varying degrees by a subnormal ability to learn, a substantially low IQ, and impaired social adjustment.
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
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