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18-letter words containing m, a, c, h, r

  • comparison shopper — an employee of a retail store hired to visit competing stores in order to gather information regarding styles, quality, prices, etc., of merchandise offered by competitors.
  • 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.
  • cot death syndrome — the unexplained sudden death of an infant during sleep
  • crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
  • 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
  • dermot macmurrough — ?1110–71, king of Leinster, who, by enlisting the support of the English to win back his kingdom, was responsible for the English conquest of Ireland
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • diatomaceous earth — an unconsolidated form of diatomite
  • disenfranchisement — to disfranchise.
  • dr. james h. clark — (person)   The founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc. and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation.
  • economic geography — a branch of geography that deals with the relation of physical and economic conditions to the production and utilization of raw materials and their manufacture into finished products.
  • elementary teacher — a teacher in an elementary school
  • euclid's algorithm — (algorithm)   (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
  • exchange programme — an arrangement in which people from different countries visit each other's country, perhaps to strengthen links between them or to improve foreign language skills
  • executive chairman — the most senior internal position within a company, combining the duties of chairman and chief executive
  • farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
  • fifth monarchy men — (during the Commonwealth in the 17th century) a militant sect of Puritans who identified the fifth monarchy with the millennial reign of Christ and who believed they should help to inaugurate that reign by force.
  • fourth commandment — “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”: fourth of the Ten Commandments.
  • gas chromatography — a chromatograph used for the separation of volatile substances.
  • genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
  • greater manchester — a metropolitan county in central England, with the city of Manchester as its center. 498 sq. mi. (1290 sq. km).
  • haemorrhagic fever — any of a group of fevers, such as Ebola virus disease and yellow fever, characterized by internal bleeding or bleeding into the skin
  • handlebar mustache — A handlebar mustache is a long thick mustache with curled ends.
  • heart-lung machine — a device through which blood is shunted temporarily for oxygenation during surgery, while the heart or a lung is being repaired.
  • heimlich manoeuvre — a technique in first aid to dislodge a foreign body in a person's windpipe by applying sudden upward pressure on the upper abdomen
  • higher mathematics — the advanced portions of mathematics, customarily considered as embracing all beyond ordinary arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry.
  • higher-order macro — A means of expressing certain higher-order functions in a first order language. Proposed by Phil Wadler. Higher-order macros cannot be recursive at the top level but they may contain recursive definitions. E.g. See partial evaluation.
  • histomorphological — histology.
  • hydrocinnamic acid — a white crystalline compound, C 9 H 10 O 2 , with a floral odor, used in perfumes and flavoring.
  • hyper-metaphorical — a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”. Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def 1).
  • hyperbaric chamber — a steel vessel in which atmospheric pressure can be raised or lowered by air compressors, used to treat divers or pilots afflicted with aeroembolism and to provide high-oxygen environments for certain medical treatments and operations.
  • hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
  • hypochromic anemia — an anemia characterized by an abnormally low concentration of hemoglobin in the red blood cells, often due to iron deficiency.
  • ice cream headache — Also called ice-cream headache. a pain in the temples and forehead brought on by quickly consuming very cold food or drink.
  • immunopharmacology — the branch of pharmacology concerned with the immune system
  • in comparison with — when compared to
  • ionization chamber — a device for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation, consisting of a tube containing a low pressure gas and two electrodes between which a high voltage is maintained. The current between the electrodes is a function of the intensity of the radiation
  • isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
  • kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
  • lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
  • lambeth conference — a convention of the bishops of the Anglican communion, held about every 10 years at Lambeth Palace to confer but not to define doctrine or to legislate on ecclesiastical matters.
  • launching ceremony — a ceremony that celebrates the launch of a ship for the first time into the water
  • lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
  • manchester terrier — one of a breed of slender terriers having a short, glossy, black-and-tan coat, raised originally in Manchester, England.
  • manhattan district — (during World War II) the code name for a unit of US army engineers established in 1942 to construct secret sites for the development of the atomic bomb
  • marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.
  • marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
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