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21-letter words containing d, e, s, o

  • lost in the underflow — (jargon)   Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to "floating point underflow". The Hacker's Jargon File claimed that it is also a pun on "undertow" (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow". Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit.
  • lotus of the good law — Saddharma-Pundarika.
  • luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
  • luminous flux density — luminous flux per unit of cross-sectional area.
  • made of sterner stuff — If you say that someone is made of sterner stuff, you mean that they have a strong personality and are capable of overcoming difficulties and problems.
  • magnetofluid dynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
  • majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
  • make (both) ends meet — to manage to keep one's expenses within one's income
  • make one's blood boil — the fluid that circulates in the principal vascular system of human beings and other vertebrates, in humans consisting of plasma in which the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets are suspended.
  • marquise de pompadour — Marquise de (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normant d'Étioles) 1721–64, mistress of Louis XV of France.
  • mask read-only memory — (storage)   (MROM) A kind of ROM in which the memory contents are determined by one of the masks used to manufacture the integrated circuit. MROM can give high storage density (bits per millimeter squared) making it a cheap solution for high volume applications.
  • mayor of casterbridge — a novel (1886) by Thomas Hardy.
  • mean square deviation — variance (def 3).
  • mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.
  • medical social worker — a person who works in a hospital and is responsible for offering counselling to patients and their families and ensuring that discharged patients will receive appropriate care in the community
  • medium access control — Media Access Control
  • meter-kilogram-second — of or relating to the system of units in which the meter, kilogram, and second are the principal units of length, mass, and time. Abbreviation: mks, MKS.
  • metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
  • modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
  • modulus of elasticity — the ratio of the stress applied to a body or substance to the resulting strain within the elastic limit
  • motherwell and wishaw — a burgh in the Motherwell district, in S Scotland.
  • motor neurone disease — Motor neurone disease is a disease which destroys the part of a person's nervous system that controls movement.
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • munchausen's syndrome — a mental disorder in which a patient feigns illness to obtain hospital treatment
  • muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
  • needs no introduction — If you say that someone or something needs no introduction, you mean that they are so well known that everyone knows who or what they are.
  • network administrator — (job)   A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.
  • nominative of address — a noun naming the person to whom one is speaking.
  • noncustodial sentence — a punishment given by a court of law that does not involve a prison term, such as a fine or a restriction order
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • not hold one's breath — If you say that you won't hold your breath, you mean that you do not expect something to happen even though someone has suggested that it might.
  • notre-dame-des-vertus — an industrial suburb of Paris, on the Seine. Pop: 63 136 (1999)
  • old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • opposed-piston engine — a reciprocating engine, as a diesel engine, in which each cylinder has two pistons that move simultaneously away from or toward the center.
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • pass the hat (around) — In British English, if you pass the hat around, you collect money from a group of people, for example in order to give someone a present. In American English, you just say pass the hat.
  • pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
  • payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
  • per second per second — a unit used for acceleration when the change in velocity per second is divided by the change in time, which is also in seconds: e.g., if the velocity increased from 5 meters per second to 20 meters per second in a time interval of one second, the acceleration would be 15 meters per second per second (15 m/sec./sec. or 15/m/sec.2)
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
  • phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
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