21-letter words containing d, i, s, m
- macgillicuddy's reeks — a mountain range in County Kerry, SW Ireland. Highest peak (also highest in Ireland), Carrantuohill, 3414 feet (1041 meters).
- madagascar aquamarine — a form of blue beryl from Madagascar, used as a gemstone
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- magnetic flux density — Also called magnetic flux density. a vector quantity used as a measure of a magnetic field. Symbol: B.
- 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 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.
- marine superintendent — a person who is responsible for the maintenance of the vessels of a shipping line, for their docking and the handling of cargo, and for the hiring of personnel for deck departments.
- marquise de pompadour — Marquise de (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normant d'Étioles) 1721–64, mistress of Louis XV of France.
- mauvais quart d'heure — a brief unpleasant experience
- 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 jurisprudence — forensic medicine.
- 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.
- mucopolysaccharidosis — Any of a group of metabolic disorders caused by the absence or malfunction of lysosomal enzymes needed to break down glycosaminoglycans.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- pacific standard time — See under standard time.
- 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.
- 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.
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pomp and circumstance — ceremony
- postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
- potassium diphosphate — any of the three orthophosphates of potassium ((potassium monophosphate) (K 2 HPO 4), (potassium diphosphate) (KH 2 PO 4), and (tripotassium phosphate) (K 3 PO 4) )
- prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
- premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
- president pro tempore — a senator, usually a senior member of the majority party, who is chosen to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president.
- protest demonstration — a manifestation of protest by public rally, parade, etc
- pseudohermaphroditism — an individual having internal reproductive organs of one sex and external sexual characteristics resembling those of the other sex or being ambiguous in nature. Compare hermaphrodite (def 1).
- public address system — loudspeaker
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
- pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse-code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse-time modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier is modulated to produce a series of pulses timed to transmit the amplitude and pitch of a signal. Abbr.: PTM.
- purchasing department — the group of staff within an organization that is responsible for buying goods or products