24-letter words containing i, m, u
- master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
- maximum lifetime benefit — The maximum lifetime benefit of a health insurance plan is the maximum amount of money that it will pay out.
- mean time between faults — Mean Time Between Failures
- mediterranean flour moth — a small cosmopolitan moth, Anagasta kuehniella, whose larvae damage stored foodstuffs, as grain and flour.
- medium-scale integration — MSI.
- michael viii palaeologus — 1234–1282, Byzantine ruler 1259–82, first of the Palaeologus emperors.
- mitigating circumstances — conditions that lessen responsibility for a crime
- morphologic construction — a construction that forms a compound or complex word. Compare syntactic construction (def 1).
- multiple reentry vehicle — a reentry vehicle equipped with multiple warheads that cannot be directed to separate targets. Abbreviation: MRV, M.R.V.
- multiple virtual storage — (operating system) (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
- multiple-valued function — function (def 4b).
- multistation access unit — Media Access Unit
- mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
- near field communication — a short-range wireless communication system that uses radio waves to enable a phone or other mobile device to interact with another device or card reader: Near Field Communication essentially lets your phone replace your credit cards. Abbreviation: NFC.
- new programming language — (language) (NEWP) A language which replaced ESPOL on the Burroughs Large System.
- open system architecture — (operating system) (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
- operational requirements — (programming) Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
- orbital angular momentum — the component of angular momentum of an electron in an atom or a nucleon in a nucleus, arising from its orbital motion rather than from its spin.
- parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
- parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool) (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
- potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
- pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel) A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.
- presumption of innocence — the rebuttable presumption of the innocence of the defendant in a criminal action in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, placing upon the prosecution the burden of proof of the defendant's guilt.
- pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications) (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
- principal quantum number — the nonnegative, integral quantum number that defines the stationary orbits in the Bohr model of the atom.
- privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
- pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
- quick-assembly furniture — furniture such as shelves and cupboards which you buy as a number of separate pieces and assemble yourself
- renewable term insurance — Renewable term insurance is term life insurance that may be renewed for another period without the policyholder needing to provide further evidence of their insurability.
- reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
- requirements engineering — (programming) The task of capturing, structuring, and accurately representing the user's requirements so that they can be correctly embodied in systems which meet those requirements (i.e. are of good quality).
- reverse annuity mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
- rocky mountain whitefish — mountain whitefish.
- rub someone's nose in it — to remind someone unkindly of his or her failing or error
- rubaiyat of omar khayyam — a free translation (first published in 1859) by Edward FitzGerald of a group of quatrains by the Persian poet Omar Khayyám.
- san bernardino mountains — mountain range in S Calif., south of the Mojave Desert: highest peak, 11,502 ft (3,506 m)
- sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
- sic transit gloria mundi — thus passes the glory of the world
- simultaneous translation — a form of translation in which the interpreter translates into the target language as quickly as possible while the speaker is still speaking in the source language
- single person supplement — an additional sum of money that a hotel charges for one person to stay in a room meant for two people
- single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
- sodium hexametaphosphate — See under Calgon.
- solution based modelling — (SBM) A software development process described in the book "Developing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh" written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, published by Addison Wesley in 1992.
- st.-bruno-de-montarville — a town in S Quebec, in E Canada, near Montreal.
- structural functionalism — functionalism (def 3).
- synchronous graphics ram — Synchronous Graphics Random Access Memory
- thompson sub-machine-gun — a .45 calibre sub-machine-gun
- to burn the midnight oil — If someone is burning the midnight oil, they are staying up very late in order to study or do some other work.
- to make up for lost time — If someone is making up for lost time, they are doing something actively and with enthusiasm because they have not had the opportunity to do it before or when they were younger.
- total maximum daily load — A total maximum daily load is the amount of pollutants which are allowed to be discharged to the environment.