18-letter words containing c, i, t, y, s, a
- hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
- hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
- hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
- hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
- in company with sb — If you feel, believe, or know something in company with someone else, you both feel, believe, or know it.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- inconsequentiality — of little or no importance; insignificant; trivial.
- indiscriminatingly — In an indiscriminating manner.
- interface analysis — (testing) A software test which checks the interfaces between program elements for consistency and adherence to predefined rules or axioms.
- investment company — a company that invests its funds in other companies and issues its own securities against these investments.
- involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
- isoamyl salicylate — a colorless, sometimes slightly yellow, synthetic oil, C 12 H 16 O 3 , having an orchidlike odor: used in perfumery.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- literary criticism — study and review of literature
- locally finite set — a collection of sets in a topological space in which each point of the space has a neighborhood that intersects a finite number of sets of the collection.
- 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".
- magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
- magnetogasdynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
- methacrylate resin — an acrylic resin formed by polymerizing the esters or amides of methacrylic acid.
- microcrystallinity — The condition of being microcrystalline.
- music to your ears — If something that you hear is music to your ears, it makes you feel very happy.
- mutual aid society — A mutual aid society is an organization that provides benefits or other help to its members when they are affected by things such as death, sickness, disability, old age, or unemployment.
- mutually exclusive — of or relating to a situation involving two or more events, possibilities, etc., in which the occurrence of one precludes the occurrence of the other: mutually exclusive plans of action.
- mutually recursive — recursion
- nursery facilities — places where young children are looked after
- on a sticky wicket — in an awkward situation
- organic solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on division of labor and interdependence and is characteristic of complex, industrial societies.
- oriental cat's-eye — a chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl, used as a gem.
- ovariohysterectomy — Surgical removal of the ovaries and uterus.
- payload specialist — an astronaut trained to handle highly complex or classified equipment carried aboard a space shuttle and to conduct experiments in space.
- pennsylvania dutch — the descendants of 17th- and 18th-century settlers in Pennsylvania from southwest Germany and Switzerland.
- peter tschaikowsky — Peter Ilyich [il-yich] /ˈɪl yɪtʃ/ (Show IPA), Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich.
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.
- phantasmagorically — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
- physical chemistry — the branch of chemistry dealing with the relations between the physical properties of substances and their chemical composition and transformations.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- physical therapist — sb who performs physiotherapy
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- pseudo-symptomatic — pertaining to a symptom or symptoms.
- psychopathological — the science or study of mental disorders.
- psychotherapeutics — psychotherapy.
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- quasi-metaphysical — pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics.
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- registered charity — official aid organization
- registered company — a company which has officially registered its business