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17-letter words containing d, o, r, m, n

  • firehose syndrome — (networking, jargon)   An absence, failure or inadequacy of flow control mechanisms causing the sender to overwhelm the receiver. The implication is that, like trying to drink from a firehose, the consequenses are worse than just loss of data, e.g. the receiver may crash. See ping-flood.
  • first commandment — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: first of the Ten Commandments.
  • forensic medicine — the application of medical knowledge to questions of civil and criminal law, especially in court proceedings.
  • fractal dimension — (mathematics)   A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
  • frames per second — (unit)   (fps) The unit of measurement of the frame rate of a moving image.
  • french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
  • from hand to hand — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
  • front-end payment — a payment required or incurred in advance of a project in order to get it under way
  • garden mignonette — a Mediterranean plant, Resida odorata, which has spikes of small greenish-white flowers with prominent anthers
  • general admission — an admission charge for unreserved seats at a theatrical performance, sports event, etc.
  • gold import point — an exchange rate at which it is as cheap to settle international accounts by importing gold bullion as by selling bills of exchange
  • gomez de la serna — Ramón [rah-mawn] /rɑˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), ("Ramón") 1888–1963, Spanish novelist, dramatist, biographer, and critic.
  • grandmother clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
  • great-grandmother — a grandmother of one's father or mother.
  • green book cd-rom — A standard CD-ROM format developed by Philips for CD-i. It is ISO 9660 compliant and uses mode 2 form 2 addressing. It can only be played on drives which are XA (Extended Architecture) compatible. Many Green Book discs contain CD-i applications which can only be played on a CD-i player but many others contain films or music videos. Video CDs in Green Book format are normally labelled "Digital Video on CD" Green Book was obsoleted by White book CD-ROM in March 1994.
  • gridiron pendulum — a clock pendulum having, as part of its shaft, an arrangement of brass and steel rods having different coefficients of expansion, such that the pendulum has the same length at any temperature.
  • gulf war syndrome — a group of symptoms occurring in some Gulf War veterans, most commonly including headache and memory loss, muscle pain, skin disorders, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and gastrointestinal and respiratory ailments, possibly caused by exposure to chemical weapons, vaccines, infectious diseases, or other factors.
  • helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
  • hoare powerdomain — powerdomain
  • hold sb to ransom — If you say that someone is holding you to ransom in British English, or holding you for ransom in American English, you mean that they are using their power to try to force you to do something which you do not want to do.
  • homeland security — national defence
  • hurler's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by physical deformity and mental deficiency
  • hydrothermal vent — an opening on the floor of the sea from which hot, mineral-rich solutions issue. Compare vent1 (def 2).
  • hydroxytryptamine — (organic compound) Any hydroxy derivative of tryptamine, but especially 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin).
  • hypodermic needle — a hollow needle used to inject solutions subcutaneously.
  • hypophrygian mode — a plagal church mode represented on the white keys of a keyboard instrument by an ascending scale from B to B, with the final on E.
  • immediate version — child version
  • immunocompromised — having an impaired or compromised immune response; immunodeficient.
  • indicator diagram — a graphical or other representation of the cyclic variations of pressure and volume within the cylinder of a reciprocating engine obtained by using an indicator
  • intercommunicated — Simple past tense and past participle of intercommunicate.
  • intermediate host — the host in which a parasite undergoes development but does not reach sexual maturity.
  • isherwood framing — a system for framing steel vessels in which light, closely spaced, longitudinal frames are connected by heavy, widely spaced transverse frames with deep webs.
  • it doesn't matter — You say 'it doesn't matter' to tell someone who is apologizing to you that you are not angry or upset, and that they should not worry.
  • job advertisement — an announcement in a newspaper, on television, or on a poster about a post of employment
  • judgment of paris — the decision by Paris to award Aphrodite the golden apple of discord competed for by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera.
  • kawasaki syndrome — a syndrome, usually afflicting children, characterized by high fever, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, rashes, irritated eyes and mucous membranes, etc. with possible damage to the cardiovascular system
  • keyboard commando — (messaging)   A bulletin board user who posts authoritatively on military or combat topics, but who has never served in uniform or heard a shot fired in anger. A poseur.
  • ladder tournament — a tournament in which the entrants are listed by name and rank, advancement being by means of challenging and defeating an entrant ranked one or two places higher.
  • lagrange's method — a procedure for finding maximum and minimum values of a function of several variables when the variables are restricted by additional conditions.
  • lambda expression — (mathematics)   A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
  • lan administrator — (job)   A person who installs and maintains LAN hardware and software. A LAN administrator troubleshoots network usage and computer peripherals. He installs new users, performs system backups and data recovery, and resolves LAN communications problems.
  • macdonnell ranges — a mountain system of central Australia, in S central Northern Territory, extending about 160 km (100 miles) east and west of Alice Springs. Highest peak: Mount Zeil, 1531 m (5024 ft)
  • madiba generation — the generation born around 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the first president of a multiracial South Africa
  • maintenance order — a court order stating that a divorced or legally separated man or woman must pay his or her former partner a regular sum in order to cover the costs of living
  • maison de moliere — Comédie Française.
  • majority decision — a decision supported by more than half the people involved
  • make inroads into — to start to use up the supply of something
  • maladministration — to administer or manage badly or inefficiently: The mayor was a bungler who maladministered the city budget.
  • managing director — manager who oversees a project
  • manufactured home — a prefabricated house, assembled in modular sections.
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