17-letter words containing i, m, e
- putative marriage — a marriage contracted in violation of an impediment, but in good faith on the part of one or both of the contracting persons.
- quantum cell wire — (electronics, computing) (Or "quantum wire", "binary wire") Quantum cells arranged in a line to carry signals. Adjacent cells with the same orientation are at a low energy state and a change of orientation at one end of a quantum wire propagates along the wire, transmitting a signal. However, unlike conventional wire, since only the orientation of charge pairs changes, no current flows. Circuits created using quantum cell wires are referred to as Quantum-dot Wireless Digital Circuits, see quantum dot, Quantum-dot Cellular Automata.
- quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
- quantum mechanics — a theory of the mechanics of atoms, molecules, and other physical systems that are subject to the uncertainty principle. Abbreviation: QM.
- quasi-competitive — of, pertaining to, involving, or decided by competition: competitive sports; a competitive examination.
- quasiexperimental — (medicine) Describing a trial in which the assignment to a group is based upon an experimental condition.
- racial harassment — persecution on the basis of race
- radial keratotomy — a surgical technique for correcting nearsightedness by making a series of spokelike incisions in the cornea to change its shape and focusing properties.
- radiant emittance — radiant flux emitted per unit area.
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- radiometeorograph — a device for the automatic transmission by radio of the data from a set of meteorological instruments
- railway timetable — a list of railway journeys arranged according to the time when they begin and end
- rat-tailed maggot — the aquatic larva of any of several syrphid flies of the genus Eristalis, that breathes through a long, thin tube at the posterior end of its body.
- read-write memory — a type of computer memory that you can write to as well as read from
- recoil escapement — anchor escapement.
- reconstructionism — a 20th-century movement among U.S. Jews, founded by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, advocating that Judaism, being a culture and way of life as well as a religion, is in sum a religious civilization requiring constant adaptation to contemporary conditions so that Jews can identify more readily and meaningfully with the Jewish community.
- recumbent bicycle — a type of bicycle that is ridden in a reclining position
- recurring decimal — Mathematics. repeating decimal.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- redemption center — a commercial establishment at which trading stamps of a specific brand may be exchanged for merchandise.
- reduction formula — a formula, such as sin (90° ± A) = cos A, expressing the values of a trigonometric function of any angle greater than 90° in terms of a function of an acute angle
- reformed spelling — a revised orthography intended to simplify the spelling of English words, especially to eliminate unpronounced letters, as by substituting thru for through, tho for though, slo for slow, etc.
- reiter's syndrome — a disease of unknown cause, occurring primarily in adult males, marked by urethritis, conjunctivitis, and arthritis.
- relative humidity — the amount of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount that the air could hold at the given temperature; the ratio of the actual water vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure. Abbreviation: RH, rh.
- relative majority — the excess of votes or seats won by the winner of an election over the runner-up when no candidate or party has more than 50 per cent
- relative pathname — (file system) A path relative to the working directory. Its first character can be anything but the pathname separator.
- relativistic mass — the mass of a body in motion relative to the observer: it is equal to the rest mass multiplied by a factor that is greater than 1 and that increases as the magnitude of the velocity increases.
- remittance advice — a letter sent by a customer to a supplier, to let them know that their invoice has been paid
- remote monitoring — (protocol) (RMON) A network management protocol that allows network information to be gathered at a single computer. Whereas SNMP gathers network data from a single type of Management Information Base (MIB), RMON 1 defines nine additional MIBs that provide a much richer set of data about network usage. For RMON to work, network devices, such as hubs and switches, must be designed to support it. The newest version of RMON, RMON 2, provides data about traffic at the network layer in addition to the physical layer. This allows administrators to analyse traffic by protocol.
- renaissance woman — a woman who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field.
- repeating decimal — a decimal numeral that, after a certain point, consists of a group of one or more digits repeated ad infinitum, as 2.33333 …. or 23.0218181818 ….
- repeating firearm — a firearm capable of discharging a number of shots without reloading.
- republic of yemen — Republic of, a country in S Arabia, formed in 1990 by the merger of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. 207,000 sq. mi. (536,130 sq. km). Capital: Aden.
- retirement relief — (formerly, in Britain) relief from capital-gains tax given to people at or over 50 when disposing of business assets
- rheumatic disease — any of a group of diseases of the connective tissue, of uncertain causes, including rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and rheumatic fever
- rheumatoid factor — an antibody that is found in the blood of many persons afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and that reacts against globulins in the blood.
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- ribbon microphone — a microphone that utilizes a metal ribbon suspended in a magnetic field.
- rich site summary — (web, standard) (RSS, blog, feed) A family of standard web document types containing regularly updated, short articles or news items. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds", "news feeds" or just "feeds") can be read with an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or Feedly. These are sometimes called "aggregators" because they combine multiple RSS feeds which the user can browse as a single list. The RSS reader tracks which articles the use has read, and is typically set to show only new articles, hence the idea of a "feed" or flow of new items. Most RSS feeds are based on RDF. RDF is a structured document format for describing textual resources such as news articles available on the web. RSS originally stood for "RDF Site Summary" as it was designed to provide short descriptions of (changes to) a website. Because it provides a standard way to deliver, or "syndicate", news or updates from one site to another, RSS is sometimes expanded as "Really Simple Syndication". It is closely associated with blogs, most of which provide an RSS feed of articles.
- ring-tailed lemur — a Madagascan prosimian primate, Lemur catta, with a long black and white ringed tail
- role-playing game — a game in which participants adopt the roles of imaginary characters in an adventure under the direction of a Game Master.
- romantic movement — the late 18th- and early 19th-century movement in France, Germany, England, and America to establish Romanticism in art and literature.
- rubberman disease — Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
- safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
- saint elmo's fire — corona discharge.
- same-sex marriage — (broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage: Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times. See Word Story at the current entry.
- sanctimoniousness — making a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, righteousness, etc.: They resented his sanctimonious comments on immorality in America.
- sandringham house — a residence of the royal family, in Sandringham, a village in E England, in Norfolk near the E shore of the Wash
- scarlet pimpernel — a plant belonging to the genus Anagallis, of the primrose family, especially A. arvensis (scarlet pimpernel) having scarlet or white flowers that close at the approach of bad weather.