23-letter words containing m, a, b, e
- make sb's life a misery — If someone makes your life a misery, they behave in an unpleasant way towards you over a period of time and make you very unhappy.
- martha washington table — a sewing table of the 18th century having an oval top that can be lifted and a central compartment of drawers with semicircular bins at each end.
- maturity-onset diabetes — diabetes (def 4).
- mexican free-tailed bat — any of several small, insect-eating bats of the genus Tadarida, of Mexico and the southwestern U.S., inhabiting limestone caves: residual DDT has reduced most populations.
- micro assembly language — (language) (MAL) A microprogramming language with high-level syntax, used in the reference below. See also Mic-1, Mac-1.
- negative bending moment — a bending moment that produces convex bending at the supports of a continuously supported beam
- nonverbal communication — gesture and facial expression
- object management group — (body) (OMG) A consortium aimed at setting standards in object-oriented programming. In 1989, this consortium, which included IBM Corporation, Apple Computer Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., mobilised to create a cross-compatible distributed object standard. The goal was a common binary object with methods and data that work using all types of development environments on all types of platforms. Using a committee of organisations, OMG set out to create the first Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard which appeared in 1991. As of February 1998, the latest standard is CORBA 2.2.
- pat someone on the back — to congratulate or encourage someone
- pin someone's ears back — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
- play by electronic mail — (games) A kind of game where the players use electronic mail to communicate. This may be done via a human moderator or an automatic mailing list exploder on some central machine or it may be fully distributed with each player just addressing his mail to all other players. This is a natural extension of "play by mail" games conducted via snail mail.
- polybrominated biphenyl — PBB.
- programmer brain damage — (humour) (PBD) A classification of a bug which was obviously introduced by an incompetent or short-sighted programmer. Compare UBD. See also brain-damaged.
- publicly-quoted company — a company whose shares are traded on a stock exchange
- random number generator — a piece of computer software used to create a sequence of random numbers
- rate-of-climb indicator — a flight instrument that indicates the rate of climb or descent of an aircraft.
- relative sunspot number — a number indicating the degree of sunspot activity on the sun as a factor of observer idiosyncrasies, the number of sunspot groups, and the number of individual sunspots.
- rocky mountain beeplant — a rank-smelling plant, Cleome serrulata, of the caper family, native to the western U.S., having showy, dense clusters of pink or white flowers, frequented by bees.
- rolling-element bearing — a roller bearing or ball bearing.
- sb doesn't miss a trick — If you say that someone does not miss a trick, you mean that they always know what is happening and take advantage of every situation.
- schematic type variable — generic type variable
- severinus de monzambano — Samuel von [zah-moo-uh l fuh n] /ˈzɑ mu əl fən/ (Show IPA), ("Severinus de Monzambano") 1632–94, German jurist and historian.
- short-billed marsh wren — sedge wren.
- silicone breast implant — silicone filled bags that are implanted into a woman in order to increase the size of her breasts
- social insurance number — a nine-digit number used by the federal government to identify a citizen
- sustainable development — supporting economy via renewable resources
- symbolic interactionism — a theory that human interaction and communication is facilitated by words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired conventionalized meanings.
- the chamber of deputies — the lower legislative assembly in some parliaments
- the numbers game/racket — If you refer to the numbers game, the numbers racket, or the numbers, you are referring to an illegal lottery or illegal betting.
- thompson submachine gun — a portable, .45-caliber, automatic weapon designed to be fired from the shoulder or hip.
- to call someone's bluff — If you call someone's bluff, you tell them to do what they have been threatening to do, because you are sure that they will not really do it.
- to go from bad to worse — If a situation goes from bad to worse, it becomes even more unpleasant or unsatisfactory.
- to make the best of sth — If you make the best of something, you accept an unsatisfactory situation cheerfully and try to manage as well as you can. In British English, you can also say that you make the best of a bad job.
- to save someone's bacon — If someone or something saves your bacon, they get you out of a dangerous or difficult situation.
- virtual loadable module — (networking) (VLM) Novell's term for software modules that can be dynamically loaded to extend the functionality of the "VLM" NetWare Requester for MS-DOS that became standard beginning with Novell NetWare 4.