25-letter words containing f, r, e, m

maintenance of membership — an arrangement or agreement between an employer and a labor union by which employees who are members of the union at the time the agreement is made, or who subsequently join, must either remain members until the agreement expires, or be discharged.
make short work of sb/sth — If you make short work of someone or something, you deal with them or defeat them very quickly.
massacre of the innocents — the slaughter of all the young male children of Bethlehem at Herod's command in an attempt to destroy Jesus (Matthew 2:16–18)
medical officer of health — a person appointed by a local or national authority to be in charge of its health policy
memorandum of association — a document giving details such as the company's name, the purpose of the company, and the address of its registered office that is legally required when incorporating a company in certain countries such as the UK
message passing interface — (communications, protocol) A de facto standard for communication among the nodes running a parallel program on a distributed memory system. MPI is a library of routines that can be called from Fortran and C programs. MPI's advantage over older message passing libraries is that it is both portable (because MPI has been implemented for almost every distributed memory architecture) and fast (because each implementation is optimised for the hardware it runs on).
metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1).
my favourite toy language — (jargon, language) (MFTL) Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g. type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see content-free). More broadly applied to talks - even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. See break-even point, toolsmith.
non-uniform memory access — (architecture) (NUMA) A memory architecture, used in multiprocessors, where the access time depends on the memory location. A processor can access its own local memory faster than non-local memory (memory which is local to another processor or shared between processors).
office of war information — OWI.
on the horns of a dilemma — one of the bony, permanent, hollow paired growths, often curved and pointed, that project from the upper part of the head of certain ungulate mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, or antelopes.
on the spur of the moment — a U -shaped device that slips over and straps to the heel of a boot and has a blunt, pointed, or roweled projection at the back for use by a mounted rider to urge a horse forward.
profit and loss statement — A profit and loss statement is a statement that is compiled at the end of a financial year showing that year's revenue and expense items and indicating gross and net profit or loss.
put sth out of its misery — If you put an animal out of its misery, you kill it because it is sick or injured and cannot be cured or healed.
qualified majority voting — a voting system, used by the EU Council of Ministers, enabling certain resolutions to be passed without unanimity
ruffle someone's feathers — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
run-time type information — (compiler) (RTTI) Facilities included in C++ compilers to allow the type of an object to be determined at run time. This facility, found in good C++ compilers and some other high level languages, adds type information to memory resident objects (i.e. type name or unique type-id). This allows the run-time system to determine if an object is of a specific type, for example, to ensure that a cast of an object is valid.
saint joseph of arimathea — a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, who obtained the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion and laid it in his own tomb (Matthew 27:57–60). Feast day: Mar 17 or July 31
single document interface — (programming) (SDI) A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single windows giving a view of one document at a time. The opposite is Multiple Document Interface (MDI).
single wingback formation — an offensive formation in which the wingback lines up outside of and about one yard behind an end, the quarterback lines up lateral to the wingback but about midway between the same end and the center, the fullback is three or four yards behind the middle of the line, and the tailback lines up one yard behind the fullback on the other side of the line from the wingback and quarterback.
single-lens reflex camera — a camera in which the image appears on a ground-glass viewer (focusing screen) after being reflected by a mirror or after passing through a prism or semitransparent glass; in one type (single-lens reflex camera) light passes through the same lens to both the ground glass and the film, while in another type (twin-lens reflex camera) light passes through one lens (viewing lens) to the ground glass and through a second lens (taking lens) to the film, the lenses being mechanically coupled for focusing.
standard ml of new jersey — (SML/NJ) An implementation of SML by Andrew Appel at Princeton <[email protected]> and Dave MacQueen at AT&T. Version 0.93. Versions for Unix, Mac. ftp://cs.yale.edu/pub/ml, ftp://research.att.com/dist/ml. Mailing list: [email protected]
the calm before the storm — You can use the calm before the storm to refer to a quiet period in which there is little or no activity, before a period in which there is a lot of trouble or intense activity.
the department of defense — the United States federal department concerned with national security
the meteorological office — a British Government department supplying weather forecasts
the mother of parliaments — the British Parliament: the model and creator of many other Parliaments
there are no flies on him — he is no fool
thermoelectromotive force — the electromotive force developed by the thermoelectric effect.
time domain reflectometer — (hardware, networking) (TDR) An electronic device for detecting and locating short- or open-circuits in an Ethernet cable. TDRs can also measure how the characteristic impedance of a line varies along its length.
to be on first-name terms — (of two people) knowing each other well enough to call each other by their first names, rather than having to use a more formal title.
to give someone free rein — If you give free rein to someone, you give them a lot of freedom to do what they want.
too close etc for comfort — If you say that something is, for example, too close for comfort, you mean you are worried because it is closer than you would like it to be.
uniform naming convention — Universal Naming Convention
uniform resource citation — (web) (URC) A set of attribute/value pairs describing an object. Some of the values may be URIs of various kinds. Others may include, for example, athorship, publisher, datatype, date, copyright status and shoe size. A URC is not normally considered as a string, but a set of fields and values with some defined free formatting.
where do we go from here? — If someone says 'Where do we go from here?' they are asking what should be done next, usually because a problem has not been solved in a satisfactory way.

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