20-letter words containing e, a, g, r
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- linguistic universal — language universal.
- literate programming — (programming, text) Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
- llywelyn ap gruffudd — died 1282, prince of Wales (1258–82): the only Welsh ruler to be recognized as such by the English
- look homeward, angel — a novel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe.
- lord high chancellor — the highest judicial officer of the British crown: law adviser of the ministry, keeper of the great seal, presiding officer in the House of Lords, etc.
- lou gehrig's disease — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magdeburg hemisphere — one of a pair of hemispherical cups from which air can be evacuated when they are placed together: used to demonstrate the force of air pressure.
- magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
- magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
- magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
- manufacturer's agent — an agent representing one or more manufacturers in selling related but noncompeting goods, usually on a commission basis and in a particular territory.
- margaret of scotland — Saint. 1045–93, queen consort of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her piety and benefactions to the church led to her canonization (1250). Feast days: June 10, Nov 16
- marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
- marriage certificate — official document recording a marriage
- mass-energy equation — the equation, E=mc2, formulated by Albert Einstein, expressing the equivalence between mass and energy, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light.
- matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
- measure one's length — to fall, lie, or be thrown down at full length
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- megabytes per second — (unit) (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
- megakaryocytopoiesis — (biology) The cellular development process that leads to platelet production.
- mickey mouse program — (jargon) The North American equivalent of a "noddy program", i.e. trivial. The term doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- military engineering — the design, construction, etc, of military fortifications and communications
- minimum lending rate — the official interest rate charged by the Bank of England and below which it will refrain from lending money.
- molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
- most general unifier — (logic) If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
- mpeg-1 audio layer 1 — (audio, compression, algorithm) (MP1) A simple 32-subband audio compressor using a floating point representation for subband samples. Resolution and scale factor are stored for groups of 12 subsamples. MP1 is only used for Philips DCC Digital Compact cassette with data rates of 384 kbps.
- mpeg-1 audio layer 3 — (music, file format) (MP3) A digital audio compression algorithm that acheives a compression factor of about twelve while preserving sound quality. It does this by optimising the compression according to the range of sound that people can actually hear. MP3 is currently (July 1999) the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). MP3 is very different from Layer 2, using an additional MDCT layer to increase frequency resolution. Its scale factor groups are more optimised for the human ear, and it uses nonlinear sample quantisation and Huffman coding. MP3 files (filename extension ".mp3") can be downloaded from many websites and can be played using software available for most operating systems (also downloadable), e.g. Winamp for PC, MacAmp for Macintosh, and mpeg123 for Unix. MP3 files are usually downloaded completely before playing but streaming MP3 is also possible. A program called a "ripper" can be used to copy a selection from a music CD onto your hard disk and another program called an encoder can convert it to an MP3 file.
- mpeg-2 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format) An extention of MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for lower sampling rates (16-24 kHz) targeting bit rates from 32-64 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps). It is often combined with MPEG-2 LSF.
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- negative electricity — the electricity present in a body or substance that has an excess of electrons, as the electricity developed on a resin when rubbed with flannel.
- neighbourhood warden — a person employed by a local authority to patrol residential areas and deal with antisocial behaviour
- nephroangiosclerosis — (pathology) sclerosis of the renal arterioles.
- net register tonnage — the taxable gross tonnage of a merchant ship.
- neurophysiologically — In terms of, or with regard to, neurophysiology.
- neuropsychologically — In terms of or by means of neuropsychology.
- next program counter — (architecture) (nPC) A register in a CPU that contains the address of the instruction to be executed next.
- nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
- night storage heater — a heater or radiator that stores heat at night-time because electricity is cheaper