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18-letter words containing c, s, i, r, o

  • john birch society — an ultraconservative organization, founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, Jr., chiefly to combat alleged Communist activities in the U.S.
  • junior high school — a school attended after elementary school and usually consisting of grades seven through nine.
  • 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.
  • lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
  • liqueur chocolates — chocolates containing liqueur
  • list comprehension — (functional programming)   An expression in a functional language denoting the results of some operation on (selected) elements of one or more lists. An example in Haskell: This returns all pairs of numbers (x,y) where x and y are elements of the list 1, 2, ..., 10, y <= x and their sum is less than 10. A list comprehension is simply "syntactic sugar" for a combination of applications of the functions, concat, map and filter. For instance the above example could be written: The term "list comprehension" appears in the references below. The earliest reference to the notation is in Rod Burstall and John Darlington's description of their language, NPL. David Turner subsequently adopted this notation in his languages SASL, KRC and Miranda, where he has called them "ZF expressions", set abstractions and list abstractions (in his 1985 FPCA paper [Miranda: A Non-Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types]).
  • lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
  • locked-in syndrome — a condition in which a person is conscious but unable to move any part of the body except the eyes: results from damage to the brainstem
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • lord chief justice — the presiding judge of Britain's High Court of Justice, the superior court of record for both criminal and civil cases.
  • loschmidt's number — the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure, equal to 2.687 × 10 19.
  • louisiana purchase — a treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
  • 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.
  • maritime provinces — region in Canada
  • medical profession — the body of people who work as doctors of medicine
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
  • mercurous chloride — calomel.
  • 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.
  • micrometeorologist — a person who specializes in micrometeorology
  • microsloth windows — (abuse, operating system)   /mi:'kroh-sloth" win"dohz/ (Or "Windoze", /win'dohz/) A derogatory term for Microsoft Windows which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with mess-dos that it is agonisingly slow on anything less than a fast 486. Also called just "Windoze", with the implication that you can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the latter term is extremely common on Usenet. Compare X, sun-stools.
  • 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.
  • microsoft extended — (computer)   (MSX) A Range of computers created in an attempt by the industry to create a standard for home computers, similar to VHS did with home video. The basic MSX machine contained a Z80 CPU working at 3.58MHz. MSX machines were produced by such giants as Sony, Yamaha, Panasonic, Toshiba, Daewoo, and Philips. The MSX standard was designed by a company called ASCII in cooperation with Microsoft who provided a firmware version of its BASIC for the machine. Because this BASIC version was an extended version of MicroSoft Basic, it was called "MicroSoft eXtended BASIC"; Hence "MSX". Microsoft also produced MSX-DOS - a stripped-down version of MS-DOS. Extensions to the MSX included MSX2, MSX2+ and TurboR.
  • microwave spectrum — a spectrum of electromagnetic radiations whose wavelengths fall in the microwave range.
  • mineralocorticoids — Plural form of mineralocorticoid.
  • misplaced modifier — Grammar. a word, phrase, or clause that seems to refer to or modify an unintended word because of its placement in a sentence, as when young in When young, circuses appeal to all of us.
  • mission controller — a person who works as part of a mission control
  • 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.
  • monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
  • mortgage insurance — policy to compensate for property loan payments
  • mucopolysaccharide — (formerly) glycosaminoglycan.
  • multiple sclerosis — a chronic degenerative, often episodic disease of the central nervous system marked by patchy destruction of the myelin that surrounds and insulates nerve fibers, usually appearing in young adulthood and manifested by one or more mild to severe neural and muscular impairments, as spastic weakness in one or more limbs, local sensory losses, bladder dysfunction, or visual disturbances.
  • music to your ears — If something that you hear is music to your ears, it makes you feel very happy.
  • national insurance — In Britain, national insurance is the state system of paying money to people who are ill, unemployed, or retired. It is financed by money that the government collects from people who work, or from their employers.
  • necrotic enteritis — an infectious disease of calves, lambs, foals, and piglets, characterized by acute diarrhoea and death, caused by the toxin of the organism Clostridium perfringens type C
  • neovascularization — the development of new blood vessels, especially in tissues where circulation has been impaired by trauma or disease.
  • netscape navigator — (networking, tool, product)   /Mozilla/ (Often called just "Netscape") A web browser from Netscape Communications Corporation. The first beta-test version was released free to the Internet on 13 October 1994. Netscape evolved from NCSA Mosaic (with which it shares at least one author) and runs on the X Window System under various versions of Unix, on Microsoft Windows and on the Apple Macintosh. It features integrated support for sending electronic mail and reading Usenet news, as well as RSA encryption to allow secure communications for commercial applications such as exchanging credit card numbers with net retailers. It provides multiple simultaneous interruptible text and image loading; native inline JPEG image display; display and interaction with documents as they load; multiple independent windows. Netscape was designed with 14.4 kbps modem links in mind. You can download Netscape Navigator for evaluation, or for unlimited use in academic or not-for-profit environments. You can also pay for it. Version: 1.0N. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
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