21-letter words containing a, v, e, m
- information retrieval — the systematic storage and recovery of data, as from a file, card catalog, or the memory bank of a computer. Abbreviation: IR.
- investment management — the process of managing business investments
- jump all over someone — to spring clear of the ground or other support by a sudden muscular effort; leap: to jump into the air; to jump out a window.
- light armored vehicle — an eight-wheeled armored reconnaissance car with a 25mm cannon, in service with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in the 1980s.
- magneto-optical drive — magneto-optical disk
- make a convenience of — to take advantage of; impose upon
- make heavy weather of — to create needless difficulties in dealing with
- maple-leaved viburnum — dockmackie.
- mariage de convenance — marriage entered into for a personal or family advantage, as for social, political, or economic reasons, usually without love and sometimes without the expectation of sexual relations.
- mauna kea observatory — an astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, situated at an altitude of 13,600 feet (4145 meters).
- mauvais quart d'heure — a brief unpleasant experience
- maximum value theorem — the theorem that for a real-valued function f whose domain is a compact set, there is at least one element x in the domain of f for which f (x) achieves its largest value.
- mean square deviation — variance (def 3).
- mean time to recovery — (specification) (MTTR) The average time that a device will take to recover from a non-terminal failure. Examples of such devices range from self-resetting fuses (where the MTTR would be very short, probably seconds), up to whole systems which have to be replaced. The MTTR would usually be part of a maintenance contract, where the user would pay more for a system whose MTTR was 24 hours, than for one of, say, 7 days. This means the supplier is guaranteeing to have the system up and running again within 24 hours (or 7 days) of being notified of the failure. Some devices have a MTTR of zero, which means that they have redundant components which can take over the instant the primary one fails, see RAID for example. See also Mean Time Between Failures.
- mohammed reza pahlavi — 1919-80; shah of Iran (1941-79); deposed
- motivational research — the application of the knowledge and techniques of the social sciences, especially psychology and sociology, to understanding consumer attitudes and behavior: used as a guide in advertising and marketing.
- move heaven and earth — the abode of God, the angels, and the spirits of the righteous after death; the place or state of existence of the blessed after the mortal life.
- multi-level marketing — Multi-level marketing is a marketing technique which involves people buying a product, then earning a commission by selling it to their friends. The abbreviation MLM is also used.
- 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.
- nominative of address — a noun naming the person to whom one is speaking.
- notre-dame-des-vertus — an industrial suburb of Paris, on the Seine. Pop: 63 136 (1999)
- of time and the river — a novel (1935) by Thomas Wolfe.
- politically motivated — If an act of violence is politically motivated, it is carried out in the interests of a particular government or political party.
- 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
- pressure-vacuum valve — a valve for relieving a sealed tank of any pressure or vacuum exceeding acceptable limits.
- privacy enhanced mail —
- private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
- record of achievement — a statement of the personal and educational development of each pupil
- redevelopment company — a private corporation or a public agency that stimulates the improvement of land, as through a building project subject to certain designs and controls, by financing, selling, or leasing such real estate to interested buyers or lessees.
- relative permeability — the ratio of the permeability of a medium to that of free space
- relative permittivity — Electricity. the ratio of the flux density produced by an electric field in a given dielectric to the flux density produced by that field in a vacuum.
- reverberation chamber — a room with walls that reflect sound. It is used to make acoustic measurements and as a source of reverberant sound to be mixed with direct sound for recording or broadcasting
- seven-segment display — (electronics) (SSD) A kind of display element consisting of seven independently controllable lines arranged as a rectangular figure eight. A seven-segment display is the simplest device that can display any of the digits zero to nine (and some other characters) by lighting different combinations of lines. They are often seen in electronic calculators or measuring equipment.
- seventeenth amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1913, providing for the election of two U.S. senators from each state by popular vote and for a term of six years.
- short message service — (messaging) (SMS) A message service offered by the GSM digital mobile telephone system. Using SMS, a short alphanumeric message (160 alphanumeric characters) can be sent to a mobile phone to be displayed there, much like in an alphanumeric pager system. The message is buffered by the GSM network until the phone becomes active.
- sympathetic vibration — a vibration induced by resonance.
- take under advisement — to consider carefully
- temperature inversion — inversion (def 12).
- the executive mansion — the White House
- throw someone a curve — a continuously bending line, without angles.
- to give the game away — If someone or something gives the game away, they reveal a secret or reveal their feelings, and this puts them at a disadvantage.
- to have money to burn — If you say that someone has money to burn, you mean that they have more money than they need or that they spend their money on things that you think are unnecessary.
- to live hand to mouth — If someone lives hand to mouth or lives from hand to mouth, they have hardly enough food or money to live on.
- to move the goalposts — If you accuse someone of moving the goalposts, you mean that they have changed the rules in a situation or an activity, in order to gain an advantage for themselves and to make things difficult for other people.
- ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
- universal affirmative — a proposition of the form “All S is P.” Symbol: A, a.
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- verbatim et literatim — word for word and letter for letter; in exactly the same words.
- virtual memory system — (operating system) (VMS) DEC's proprietary operating system originally produced for its VAX minicomputer. VMS V1 was released in August 1978. VMS was renamed "OpenVMS" around version 5.5. The first version of VMS on DEC Alpha was known as OpenVMS for AXP V1.0, and the correct way to refer to the operating system now is OpenVMS for VAX or OpenVMS for Alpha. The renaming also signified the fact that the X/Open consortium had certified OpenVMS as having a high support for POSIX standards. VMS is one of the most secure operating systems on the market (making it popular in financial institutions). It currently (October 1997) has the best clustering capability (both number and distance) and is very scalable with binaries portable from small desktop workstations up to huge mainframes. Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favourite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious.
- vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.