26-letter words containing c, r, o, s, u, n
- make a virtue of necessity — moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
- master of the king's music — (in Britain when the sovereign is male) a court post dating from the reign of Charles I. It is an honorary title and normally held by an established English composer
- mecklenburg-west pomerania — a state of NE Germany, along the Baltic coast: consists of the former state of Mecklenburg and those parts of W Pomerania not incorporated into Poland after World War II: part of East Germany until 1990. Pop: 1 732 000 (2003 est)
- microcrystalline cellulose — Microcrystalline cellulose is a polymer used as a binder in tablets because it is stable, compressible, and disintegrates quickly.
- micronetics standard mumps — (MSM) A version of MUMPS for the IBM PC RT and R6000.
- minimum-access programming — a method of programming in which latency is reduced to a minimum.
- mongolian hordes technique — (programming, jargon) (Or "Chinese Army technique") Assigning a large number of inexperienced programmers to a job which would better performed by a few skilled ones. The term was first used by Dr. Fred Brooks in his book "The Mythical Man-Month", Chapter 3. According to Dr. Brooks, he had in mind the vision of the Mongol Hordes sweeping across Asia and Europe when he created the term.
- most-favored-nation clause — a clause in a commercial treaty or contract by which each signatory agrees to give the other the same treatment that is or will be accorded any other nation.
- mushroom slab construction — beamless reinforced-concrete floor and roof construction employing columns with widely flaring heads having horizontal rings of reinforcement to support the floor or roof slab.
- mutual assured destruction — a U.S. doctrine of reciprocal deterrence resting on the U.S. and Soviet Union each being able to inflict unacceptable damage on the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.
- nature conservancy council — (in Britain) a body set up by act of parliament in 1973 to establish and manage nature reserves, identify SSSIs, and provide information and advice about nature conservation. In 1991–92 it was replaced by English Nature, Scottish Natural Heritage, and the Countryside Council for Wales
- nondeterministic automaton — (theory) (Or "probabilistic automaton") An automaton in which there are several possible actions (outputs and next states) at each state of the computation such that the overall course of the computation is not completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. See also nondeterministic Turing Machine.
- nuclear magnetic resonance — the selective absorption of electromagnetic radiation by an atomic nucleus in the presence of a strong, static, magnetic field: used in research and in medicine to monitor tissue metabolism and to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells. Abbreviation: NMR.
- object constraint language — (language) (OCL) A formal specification language extension to UML. The Object Constraint Language is a precise text language that provides constraint and object query expressions on an object-oriented model that cannot otherwise be expressed by diagrammatic notation. OCL supplements UML by providing expressions that have neither the ambiguities of natural language nor the inherent difficulty of using complex mathematics. OCL is a descendent of Syntropy, a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions.
- official production system — (language) (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
- organophosphorus-compounds — Biochemistry. any of a variety of organic compounds that contain phosphorus and often have intense neurotoxic activity: originally developed as nerve gases, now widely used as insecticides and fire retardants.
- orthogonal instruction set — (architecture) An instruction set where all (or most) instructions have the same format and all registers and addressing modes can be used interchangeably - the choices of op code, register, and addressing mode are mutually independent (loosely speaking, the choices are "orthogonal"). This contrasts with some early Intel microprocessors where only certain registers could be used by certain instructions. Examples include the PDP-11, 680x0, ARM, VAX.
- people's republic of china — People's Republic of, a country in E Asia. 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). Capital: Beijing.
- post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
- pour encourager les autres — in order to encourage the others: often used ironically
- principle of superposition — any of several physical laws that the resultant of similar vector quantities at a point is a function of the sum of the individual quantities, especially the law that the displacement at a point in a medium undergoing simple harmonic motion is equal to the sum of the displacements of each individual wave.
- provence-alpes-côte d'azur — metropolitan region of SE France: 12,124 sq mi (31,401 sq km); pop. 4,258,000; chief city, Marseille
- public-service corporation — a private or quasi-private corporation chartered to provide an essential commodity or service to the public.
- pulse repetition frequency — the number of pulses per second in a system of pulse transmission. Abbreviation: PRF.
- red-backed squirrel monkey — a related species, Saimiri oerstedi, of Central America, having a reddish coat and dark brown limbs
- refinery’s own consumption — Refinery's own consumption is the gas and fuel which is burnt to operate the units in a refinery and generate electricity and steam.
- replacement cost insurance — Replacement cost insurance is insurance in which the cost of replacing property is calculated without a reduction for depreciation.
- reticuloendothelial system — the aggregate of the phagocytic cells, including certain cells of the bone marrow, lymphatic system, liver, and spleen, that have reticular and endothelial characteristics and function in the immune system's defense against foreign bodies. Abbreviation: RES.
- richardson ground squirrel — a ground squirrel, Citellus richardsoni, of sagebrush and grassland areas of the northwestern U.S. and adjacent regions in Canada.
- richthofen's flying circus — the German 11th Chasing Squadron of World War I, commanded by Baron Richthofen
- sangre de cristo mountains — a mountain range in S Colorado and N New Mexico: part of the Rocky Mountains. Highest peak: Blanca Peak, 4364 m (14 317 ft)
- sans peur et sans reproche — without fear and without reproach: said originally of the French knight, the Seigneur de Bayard.
- string processing language — (language) (SPRING)
- strong nuclear interaction — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
- subscriber identity module — (telecommunications, wireless) (SIM or "SIM card") A component, usually in the form of a miniature smart-card, that is theoretically tamper-proof and is used to associate a mobile subscriber with a mobile network subscription. The SIM holds the subscriber's unique MSISDN along with secret information such as a private encryption key and encryption and digital signature algorithms. Most SIMs also contain non-volatile storage for network and device management, contact lists, text messages sent and received, logos and in some cases even small Java programs.
- system product interpreter — Restructured EXtended eXecutor
- the consumers' association — a British organization which assesses and reports on new products and defends consumers' rights
- to call something your own — If you have something you can call your own, it belongs only to you, rather than being controlled by or shared with someone else.
- to pour scorn on something — If you pour scorn on someone or something or heap scorn on them, you say that you think they are stupid and worthless.
- tourist information office — an office that supplies information to people who are visiting an area for pleasure or interest, for example advice on things to see, accommodation, etc
- udmurt autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 16,250 sq. mi. (42,088 sq. km). Capital: Izhevsk.
- ulster defence association — (in Northern Ireland) a Loyalist paramilitary organization
- united states marine corps — Marine Corps. Abbreviation: USMC.
- universal communications x — (communications) (UCX) A software implementation of the ubiquitous TCP/IP suite of communications protocols for Digital Equipment Corporation's OpenVMS operating system. Users of the UCX product can connect to heterogeneous networks to access and download files, send electronic mail, run and develop applications, and monitor activity.
- universal resource locator — Uniform Resource Locator
- universal time coordinated — incorrect term for coordinated universal time.
- very long instruction word — (language, architecture) (VLIW) Used to describe a machine code instruction set implemented using horizontal microcode. A horizontally encoded instruction word which encodes four or more operations might be considered "very long". VLIW architectures are sometimes classified as a type of static superscalar architecture. They are static in the sense that which units operate in parallel is determined by the instruction rather than by dynamic scheduling at run time. Producing code for VLIW machines is difficult; trace scheduling is a helpful compiler technique. The most famous VLIW machine was built by (the late) Multiflow Computer, Inc.
- victoria and albert museum — a museum of the fine and applied arts in London, originating from 1856 and given its present name and site in 1899
- voluntary service overseas — an organization that sends young volunteers to use and teach their skills in developing countries