18-letter words containing m, a, b
- linear combination — a sum of products of each quantity times a constant: The expression aX + bY + cZ is a linear combination of X, Y, and Z, where a, b, and c are constants.
- lose one's marbles — If you say that someone has lost their marbles, you mean that their ideas or behaviour are very strange, as if they have become insane.
- macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
- madeira embroidery — broderie anglaise.
- make a beeline for — head directly towards
- malpighian tubules — one of a group of long, slender excretory tubules at the anterior end of the hindgut in insects and other terrestrial arthropods.
- mandelbrot, benoit — Benoit Mandelbrot
- manufacturing base — the manufacturing industries of an area or a country considered as a unit and a constituent part of the economy
- master boot record — (operating system, storage) A special area on a computer's main hard disk that gives the location of the disk's boot block or bootable partition where the operating system is installed.
- medicine bow range — a range of the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming and Colorado. Highest peak, Medicine Bow Peak, 12,014 feet (3662 meters).
- membrane transport — the process by which physiologically important substances, such as calcium ions, sugars, etc, are conveyed across a biological membrane
- metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
- microinvertebrates — Plural form of microinvertebrate.
- mobile data system — a system consisting of a client computer requesting information and a server supplying this information
- mobility allowance — an allowance paid by the government to help people who have limited mobility
- mohammed ibn-kasim — flourished early 8th century a.d, Muslim conqueror of the Sind region in India.
- mordovian republic — a constituent republic of W central Russia, in the middle Volga basin. Capital: Saransk. Pop: 888 700 (2002). Area: 26 200 sq km (10 110 sq miles)
- motor torpedo boat — PT boat.
- mountain cranberry — cowberry
- moving bed reactor — A moving bed reactor is a reactor in which a layer of catalyst in the form of granules is moved between a reaction area and a regeneration area.
- mozambique channel — a channel in SE Africa, between Mozambique and Madagascar. 950 miles (1530 km) long; 250–550 miles (400–885 km) wide.
- multicast backbone — (MBONE) A virtual network on top of the Internet which supports routing of IP multicast packets, intended for multimedia transmission. MBONE gives public access desktop video communications. The quality is poor with only 3-5 frames per second instead of the 30 frames per second of commercial television. Its advantage is that it avoids all telecommunications costs normally associated with teleconferencing. An interesting innovation is the use of MBONE for audio communications and an electronic "whiteboard" where the computer screen becomes a shared workspace where two physically remote parties can draw on and edit shared documents in real-time.
- net book agreement — a former agreement between UK publishers and booksellers that until 1995 prohibited booksellers from undercutting the price of books sold in bookshops
- new american bible — an English translation of the Bible based on the original languages, prepared by Catholic Biblical scholars, and first published in 1970.
- objective idealism — a form of idealism asserting that the act of experiencing has a reality combining and transcending the natures of the object experienced and of the mind of the observer.
- objective modula-2 — (language) (Or "ObjM2") An extension to Modula-2 for Cocoa and GNUstep software development. Objective Modula-2 follows the Objective-C object model and retains the bracketed Smalltalk message passing syntax used in Objective-C. Classes written in ObjM2 can be used within ObjC and vice versa. ObjM2 also retains Modula-2's data encapsulation features, namely nested modules with explicit import and export lists. Due to the strict type checking in Modula-2, ObjM2 can be considered a much safer programming language than is ObjC, yet losing none of the capabilities of ObjC.
- on one's beam-ends — out of resources; destitute
- one-banana problem — (jargon, abuse) At computer installations where the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. The incentives offered to said monkeys would then describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's taking them so long?" See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
- palm beach gardens — a city in SE Florida, near North Palm Beach.
- payment by results — a system of wage payment whereby all or part of the wage varies systematically according to the level of work performance of an employee
- plumber's merchant — a shop or business that sells things needed for the job of installing and repairing pipes, fixtures, etc, for water, drainage, and gas
- portable equipment — Portable equipment is electrical equipment that can easily be moved from one place to another while in operation or while connected to the supply.
- public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
- publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
- punishment beating — a form of corporal punishment carried out by a paramilitary organization on a member of another sectarian organization, usually in Northern Ireland
- pyramus and thisbe — (in Greek legend) two lovers of Babylon: Pyramus, wrongly supposing Thisbe to be dead, killed himself and she, encountering him in his death throes, did the same
- remains to be seen — If you say that it remains to be seen whether something will happen, you mean that nobody knows whether it will happen.
- remembrance sunday — the second Sunday in November, which is the Sunday closest to November 11, the anniversary of the armistice of 1918 that ended World War I, on which the dead of both World Wars are commemorated
- reverberation time — the time it takes for a sound made in a room to diminish by 60 decibels.
- rheims-douay bible — Douay Bible.
- run in sb's family — If a characteristic runs in someone's family, it often occurs in members of that family, in different generations.
- saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
- september holidays — a period of time in September when people do not have to go to school, college or work
- september massacre — (in the French Revolution) the massacre of royalists and other inmates of the prisons of Paris, September 2–6, 1792.
- significant symbol — a verbal or nonverbal gesture, as a word or smile, that has acquired a conventionalized meaning.
- simone de beauvoir — Simone [see-mawn] /siˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) 1908–86, French playwright, novelist, and essayist.
- slobodan milosevic — Slobodan [sloh-buh-dain] /ˈsloʊ bəˌdɛən/ (Show IPA), 1941–2006, Yugoslav and Serbian politician: president of Serbia 1989–97, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1997–2000, accused of war crimes 2001.
- small pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.