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18-letter words containing c, o, a, s, t, r

  • historical present — the present tense used in narrating a past event as if happening at the time of narration.
  • honorary secretary — a unpaid person who is one of the managers of an organization
  • 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 comparison with — when compared to
  • in inverted commas — If you say in inverted commas after a word or phrase, you are indicating that it is inaccurate or unacceptable in some way, or that you are quoting someone else.
  • in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • inspector of taxes — an official of HMRC whose work is to assess individuals' income tax liability
  • instruction manual — how-to, usage guide
  • intercartilaginous — (anatomy) Within cartilage.
  • internal secretion — a secretion, esp a hormone, that is absorbed directly into the blood
  • involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
  • isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
  • italian corn salad — a southern European plant, Valerianella eriocarpa, of the valerian family, having edible, spoon-shaped, hairy leaves and dense clusters of pale-blue flowers.
  • jack of all trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
  • jack-of-all-trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
  • japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
  • knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
  • lactose intolerant — cannot digest milk
  • lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
  • lenticular process — a method for producing images with a three-dimensional effect by photographing on lenticulated film.
  • lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
  • liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
  • lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
  • long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
  • macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
  • 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
  • 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
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
  • manufactured goods — products made by machine
  • maritime provinces — region in Canada
  • 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.
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
  • 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.
  • metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
  • microcrystallinity — The condition of being microcrystalline.
  • microencapsulation — the process of enclosing chemical substances in microcapsules.
  • microinvertebrates — Plural form of microinvertebrate.
  • microsoft exchange — (messaging)   Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.
  • microwave spectrum — a spectrum of electromagnetic radiations whose wavelengths fall in the microwave range.
  • mineralocorticoids — Plural form of mineralocorticoid.
  • moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
  • molecular genetics — a subdivision of genetics concerned with the structure and function of genes at the molecular level.
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