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18-letter words containing g, a, r, m, i, s

  • madagascar jasmine — a Madagascan twining, woody vine, Stephanotis floribunda, of the milkweed family, having waxy-white, fragrant flowers.
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.
  • magistrates' court — law: handles minor crimes
  • magnesium arsenate — a white, water-insoluble powder, Mg 3 (AsO 4) 2 ⋅xH 2 O, used chiefly as an insecticide.
  • magnesium peroxide — a white, tasteless, water-insoluble powder, MgO 2 , used as an antiseptic and as an oxidizing and bleaching agent.
  • magnesium stearate — Magnesium stearate is a salt that is often used as a diluent and lubricant in tablets and capsules.
  • magnetic resonance — the response by atoms, molecules, or nuclei subjected to a magnetic field to radio waves or other forms of energy: used in medicine for scanning
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
  • manufacturing base — the manufacturing industries of an area or a country considered as a unit and a constituent part of the economy
  • margaret of valois — ("Queen Margot") 1533–1615, 1st wife of Henry IV of France: queen of Navarre; patron of science and literature (daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici).
  • marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
  • marketing strategy — a general plan or set of plans dealing with marketing, especially over a long period
  • materials handling — the loading, unloading, and movement of goods, as within a factory or warehouse, especially by the aid of mechanical devices.
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
  • microsoft exchange — (messaging)   Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.
  • moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
  • molecular genetics — a subdivision of genetics concerned with the structure and function of genes at the molecular level.
  • monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
  • mortgage insurance — policy to compensate for property loan payments
  • national guardsman — guardsman (def 2).
  • neo-pythagoreanism — a philosophical system, established in Alexandria and Rome in the second century b.c., consisting mainly of revived Pythagorean doctrines with elements of Platonism and Stoicism.
  • nightmare scenario — If you describe a situation or event as a nightmare scenario, you mean that it is the worst possible thing that could happen.
  • operations manager — business director
  • osteogenic sarcoma — osteosarcoma
  • pemphigus vulgaris — a potentially fatal blistering skin disease, characterized by large blisters on the skin, mucous membranes of the mouth, genitals, intestines, etc, which eventually rupture and form painful denuded areas from which critical amounts of bodily protein, fluid, and blood may be lost
  • phantasmagorically — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
  • pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
  • programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • remanent magnetism — magnetization in minerals induced by a former magnetic field and persisting after the field changes.
  • residual magnetism — remanence.
  • retrograde amnesia — a memory disorder characterized by an inability to remember events or experiences that occurred before a significant point in time.
  • sampling frequency — sample rate
  • saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
  • security agreement — business: contract
  • self-disparagement — the act of disparaging.
  • self-incriminating — serving to incriminate oneself or to expose oneself to prosecution: self-incriminating testimony.
  • ski-mountaineering — a combination of the sports of skiing and mountaineering, for example by climbing up a mountain then skiing down it
  • social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
  • societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
  • something to spare — a surplus of something
  • specimen signature — a signature to be compared to an original signature in order to verify someone's identity
  • spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
  • stirling's formula — a relation that approximates the value of n factorial (n!), expressed as .
  • strait of magellan — a strait between the mainland of S South America and Tierra del Fuego, linking the S Pacific with the S Atlantic. Length: 600 km (370 miles). Width: up to 32 km (20 miles)
  • submaxillary gland — submandibular gland.
  • sugarloaf mountain — a mountain in SE Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. 1280 feet (390 meters).
  • summary proceeding — a mode of trial authorized by statute to be held before a judge without the usual full hearing.
  • super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
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