20-letter words containing m, a, c, e
- methyl chloroformate — a colorless liquid, C 2 H 3 ClO 2 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
- methylbenzyl acetate — methylphenylcarbinyl acetate.
- mexican jumping bean — jumping bean.
- mickey mouse program — (jargon) The North American equivalent of a "noddy program", i.e. trivial. The term doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
- microcrystalline wax — Microcrystalline wax is a wax used as a stiffening agent and as a coating agent for tablets and capsules.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- middle-distance race — a race of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- minkowski space-time — a four-dimensional space in which three coordinates specify the position of a point in space and the fourth represents the time at which an event occurred at that point
- mischaracterizations — Plural form of mischaracterization.
- mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
- molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- monkey on one's back — any mammal of the order Primates, including the guenons, macaques, langurs, and capuchins, but excluding humans, the anthropoid apes, and, usually, the tarsier and prosimians. Compare New World monkey, Old World monkey.
- moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
- mother of the chapel — (in British trade unions in the publishing and printing industries) a woman shop steward
- mountain rescue team — a group of people who conduct search and rescue on a mountain, for example of someone who has fallen, got lost, etc
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- multiple inheritance — (programming) In object-oriented programming, the possibility that a class may have more than one direct superclass in the class hierarchy. The opposite is single inheritance.
- multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- multistorey car park — a car park consisting of several levels
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- neapolitan ice cream — variously flavored and colored ice cream and ice mixtures frozen in layers.
- near-market research — scientific research that, while not linked to the development of a specific product, is likely to be commercially exploitable
- negative campaigning — political campaigning in which a politician or party focuses on criticizing another politician or party rather than emphasizing their own positive qualities
- nemine contradicente — no one contradicting; unanimously.
- neuromusculoskeletal — (medicine) Describing the interactions between nerves, muscles and the skeleton.
- new democratic party — the Canadian social democratic party formed in 1961
- new jerusalem church — a sect founded in 1787, based on Swedenborgianism
- newcastle-under-lyme — a town in W central England, in Staffordshire. Pop: 74 427 (2001)
- next program counter — (architecture) (nPC) A register in a CPU that contains the address of the instruction to be executed next.
- nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
- niemann-pick disease — a rare, hereditary lipid-storage disease, occurring primarily among Ashkenazic Jews, in which abnormal lipid metabolism results in enlargement of the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes, and in progressive mental and physical deterioration.
- no lack of something — If you say there is no lack of something, you are emphasizing that there is a great deal of it.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- normal zeeman effect — the dividing of a spectral line or lines as a result of placing a radiation source in a magnetic field. The division consists of three equally spaced lines (normal Zeeman effect) in systems for which the spin quantum number is zero, or of three or more unequally spaced lines (anomalous Zeeman effect) in systems for which the spin quantum number is not zero.
- north american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas fault and Aleutian Trench.
- not have the stomach — If you have no stomach for something, you do not have the courage to do it.
- objective relativism — the doctrine that knowledge of real objects is relative to the individual.
- omega-3 (fatty acid) — a type of polyunsaturated fatty acid in fish oil, shellfish, soybeans, etc., linked to low cholesterol and low LDL levels
- omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
- on someone's account — Your feelings on someone's account are the feelings you have about what they have experienced or might experience, especially when you imagine yourself to be in their situation.
- ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.
- optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
- orthopaedic mattress — a specially firm mattress designed to help correct or ameliorate the discomfort of disorders of the spine and joints
- pale western cutworm — the larva of a noctuid moth, Agrotis orthogonia, of the western U.S. and Canada, that seriously damages grains, beets, potatoes, alfalfa, etc., by feeding underground on roots and stems.
- pan-american highway — a road system proposed in the 1920s linking nations of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Alaska to Santiago, Chile, with some gaps remaining in Panama and Colombia. The section between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Panama City is known as the Inter-American Highway Total length about 16,000 miles (25,744 km).
- paper chromatography — the separation of mixtures into their constituents by preferential adsorption by a solid, as a column of silica (column chromatography) or a strip of filter paper (paper chromatography) or by a gel.
- parametric amplifier — a device, as an electron tube or transistor, that amplifies a high-frequency input signal by sinusoidally varying the reactance of the circuit.