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18-letter words containing i, n, u, m, e

  • configuration item — (jargon)   Hardware or software, or an aggregate of both, which is designated by the project configuration manager (or contracting agency) for configuration management.
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • consumer terrorism — the practice of introducing dangerous substances to foodstuffs or other consumer products, esp to extort money from the manufacturers
  • counterculturalism — The counterculture movement or lifestyle.
  • counterprogramming — the practice of scheduling a program opposite another program, esp. a popular one, that appeals to a different kind of audience, as in placing a romantic film directed at women opposite a sports program mainly watched by men
  • counterreformation — a reform movement to oppose a previous one
  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
  • cunninghame graham — R(obert) B(ontine). 1852–1936, Scottish traveller, writer, and politician, noted for his essays and short stories: first president (1928) of the Scottish Nationalist Party
  • cushing's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by obesity, hypertension, excessive hair growth, etc., caused by an overactive adrenal gland or large doses of corticosteroids
  • customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • customs inspection — an inspection carried out by a customs department
  • definitive plumage — the plumage of a bird that, once attained, does not change significantly in color or pattern for the rest of the bird's life.
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
  • diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
  • dietary supplement — a substance taken in addition to what you eat in order to promote health
  • digital humanities — (used with a singular verb) the study of literature, philosophy, etc., as facilitated by computer technology or digital media: Digital humanities uses data analysis to find patterns in large bodies of text. the set of methodologies used in such scholarship.
  • dispatch documents — documents sent with a parcel, etc, detailing information such as contents, delivery address, etc
  • dominican republic — a republic in the West Indies, occupying the E part of the island of Hispaniola. 19,129 sq. mi. (49,545 sq. km). Capital: Santo Domingo.
  • double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
  • dramatic monologue — a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.
  • ecumenical council — a solemn assembly in the Roman Catholic Church, convoked and presided over by the pope and composed of cardinals, bishops, and certain other prelates whose decrees, when confirmed by the pope, become binding.
  • eighty-column mind — (abuse)   The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from punched card to paper tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried "face down, 9-edge first" (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as follows: He died at the console Of hunger and thirst. Next day he was buried, Face down, 9-edge first. The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. See fear and loathing, card walloper.
  • electroluminescent — Having the quality of electroluminescence.
  • emergent evolution — the doctrine that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as life and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities
  • energy consumption — amount of energy used
  • entrepreneurialism — The spirit or state of acting in an entrepreneurial manner.
  • entry requirements — the types and grades of examination required to enter a university
  • ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
  • euglenoid movement — the expansion and contraction of the cell body of various flagellates
  • european community — an economic and political association of European States that came into being in 1967, when the legislative and executive bodies of the European Economic Community merged with those of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community: subsumed into the European Union in 1993
  • executive chairman — the most senior internal position within a company, combining the duties of chairman and chief executive
  • exercise equipment — equipment that can be used for exercising, such as tread mills, rowing machines, etc
  • feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
  • five hundred rummy — a variety of rummy in which the winner is the first player to score 500 points.
  • formal equivalence — the relation that holds between two open sentences when their universal closures are materially equivalent
  • foundation garment — an undergarment, as a girdle or corset, worn by women to support or give shape to the contours of the body.
  • fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
  • gainful employment — an occupation that pays an income
  • genital mutilation — any type of cutting or removal of all or some of the genital organs, especially excision of the clitoris.
  • give someone curry — to assault (a person) verbally or physically
  • give someone pause — to make someone hesitant or uncertain
  • glomerulonephritis — a kidney disease affecting the capillaries of the glomeruli, characterized by albuminuria, edema, and hypertension.
  • gnu superoptimiser — (GSO) A function sequence generator that uses an exhaustive generate-and-test approach to find the shortest instruction sequence for a given function. Written by Torbjorn Granlund <[email protected]> and Tom Wood. You have to tell the superoptimiser which function and which CPU you want to get code for. This is useful for compiler writers. FTP superopt-2.2.tar.Z from a GNU archive site. Generates code for DEC Alpha, SPARC, Intel 80386, 88000, RS/6000, 68000, 29000 and Pyramid (SP, AP and XP).
  • going to jerusalem — musical chairs.
  • government housing — housing owned and managed by the federal or state government, which is rented out to tenants, esp as a form of affordable housing
  • greenhouse warming — the increase in the mean temperature of the earth attributed to the greenhouse effect
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