20-letter words containing c, d
- linear address space — A memory addressing scheme used in processors where the whole memory can be accessed using a single address that fits in a single register or instruction. This contrasts with a segmented memory architecture, such as that used on the Intel 8086, where an address is given by an offset from a base address held in one of the "segment registers". Linear addressing greatly simplifies programming at the assembly language level but requires more instruction word bits to be allocated for an address.
- liquidity preference — (in Keynesian economics) the degree of individual preference for cash over less liquid assets.
- long island iced tea — a potent cocktail consisting of equal parts of, typically, five different distilled alcoholic liquors, usually vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and triple sec, with a small amount of mixer, usually cola
- longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- lord high chancellor — the highest judicial officer of the British crown: law adviser of the ministry, keeper of the great seal, presiding officer in the House of Lords, etc.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- madwoman of chaillot — a satirical comedy (1945) by Jean Giraudoux.
- magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- maintenance and cure — the right of an injured sailor to support and medical treatment.
- make a/no difference — If something makes a difference or makes a lot of difference, it affects you and helps you in what you are doing. If something makes no difference, it does not have any effect on what you are doing.
- margaret of scotland — Saint. 1045–93, queen consort of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her piety and benefactions to the church led to her canonization (1250). Feast days: June 10, Nov 16
- matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
- mechanical advantage — the ratio of output force to the input force applied to a mechanism.
- mechanical impedance — impedance (def 2).
- mechanical-impedance — Electricity. the total opposition to alternating current by an electric circuit, equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the resistance and reactance of the circuit and usually expressed in ohms. Symbol: Z.
- media access control — (networking) (MAC) The lower sublayer of the OSI data link layer. The interface between a node's Logical Link Control and the network's physical layer. The MAC differs for various physical media. See also MAC Address, Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, token ring.
- medical practitioner — doctor
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- megabytes per second — (unit) (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
- memory address space — (architecture) 1. Any part of a processor's address space that is occupied by memory. 2. The range of addresses seen by a memory device relative to the base address at which it is mapped into the processor's address space.
- meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
- metric hundredweight — a unit of weight equivalent to 50 kilograms.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- midcourse correction — a navigational correction made in the course of a ship, airplane, rocket, or space vehicle at some point between the beginning and end of the journey.
- middle-distance race — a race of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
- mollweide projection — homolographic projection.
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- nemine contradicente — no one contradicting; unanimously.
- net domestic product — the gross domestic product minus an allowance for the depreciation of capital goods
- net national product — the gross national product less allowance for depreciation of capital goods. Abbreviation: NNP.
- new democratic party — the Canadian social democratic party formed in 1961
- newcastle-under-lyme — a town in W central England, in Staffordshire. Pop: 74 427 (2001)
- niemann-pick disease — a rare, hereditary lipid-storage disease, occurring primarily among Ashkenazic Jews, in which abnormal lipid metabolism results in enlargement of the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes, and in progressive mental and physical deterioration.
- nodding acquaintance — a slight, incomplete, or superficial knowledge (of something or someone): He had only a nodding acquaintance with Italian and didn't trust it to get him through the tour. Although we were neighbors for several years, we had only a nodding acquaintance.
- nonaccidental injury — damage, such as a bruise, burn, or fracture, deliberately inflicted on a child or an old person
- noncondensing engine — a steam engine releasing exhaust steam to the atmosphere rather than condensing it to hot feedwater.
- nondirective therapy — client-centered therapy.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- north atlantic drift — an ocean current flowing NE toward the British Isles, formed by the convergence of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current SE of Newfoundland.
- north canadian river — a river in NE New Mexico, E Texas, and E Oklahoma, flowing SE to the Canadian River. 760 miles (1223 km) long.
- north richland hills — a town in N Texas.
- northern white cedar — any of several chiefly coniferous trees valued for their wood, especially Chamaecyparis thyoides, of the eastern U.S., or Thuja occidentalis (northern white cedar) of northeastern North America.
- not hold a candle to — to be inferior or contemptible in comparison with
- not mince your words — If you say that someone does not mince their words, you mean that they speak in a forceful and direct way, especially when saying something unpleasant to someone.