20-letter words containing m, a, n, s
- cross someone's path — to meet or thwart someone
- daylight saving time — Daylight Saving Time is a period of time in the summer when the clocks are set one hour forward, so that people can have extra light in the evening.
- daylight-saving time — the civil time observed when daylight saving is adopted in a country or community.
- dementia pugilistica — chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
- desmopressin acetate — a vasopressin analogue, C 46 H 64 N 14 O 12 S 2 , used in the treatment of diabetes insipidus.
- diammonium phosphate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble compound, (NH 4) 2 HPO 4 , used as fertilizer, in fire extinguishers, etc.
- diamond skin disease — a form of swine erysipelas in which diamond-shaped skin inflammations appear, often accompanied by swollen joints.
- dimensional analysis — a method for comparing the dimensions of the physical quantities occurring in a problem to find relationships between the quantities without having to solve the problem completely. Compare dimension (def 6).
- discretionary income — money for luxuries
- displacement current — the rate of change, at any point in space, of electric displacement with time.
- displacement tonnage — the number of long tons of water displaced by a vessel, light or load displacement being specified.
- distress merchandise — goods sold below the prevailing price in order to raise cash quickly or to meet some other financial emergency.
- do someone a service — If you do someone a service, you do something that helps or benefits them.
- domestic heating oil — a liquid petroleum product used to fuel residential building furnaces or boilers
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- dun & bradstreet — an agency furnishing subscribers with information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses
- early modern english — the English language represented in printed documents of the period starting with Caxton (1476) and ending with Dryden (1700).
- early sunday morning — a painting (1930) by Edward Hopper.
- early warning system — Military. a network of radar installations designed to detect enemy aircraft or missiles in time for the effective deployment of defense systems.
- early-warning system — Military. a network of radar installations designed to detect enemy aircraft or missiles in time for the effective deployment of defense systems.
- eastern roman empire — the eastern of the two empires created by the division of the Roman Empire in 395 ad
- economic rationalism — an economic policy based on the efficiency of market forces, characterized by minimal government intervention, tax cuts, privatization, and deregulation of labour markets
- electrohydrodynamics — (physics) the study of the dynamics of electrically conducting fluid.
- eleusinian mysteries — a mystical religious festival, held in September at Eleusis in classical times, in which initiates celebrated Persephone, Demeter, and Dionysus
- employee association — an organization, other than a trade union, whose members comprise employees of a single employing organization. The aims of the association may be social, recreational, or professional
- endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
- equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
- erythema infectiosum — a mild infectious disease of childhood, caused by a virus, characterized by fever and a red rash spreading from the cheeks to the limbs and trunk
- essential amino acid — an amino acid that cannot be synthesized in the body and is thus an essential component of the diet
- essential complexity — (programming) A measure of the "structuredness" of a program.
- estrela mountain dog — a sturdy well-built dog of a Portuguese breed with a long thick coat and a thick tuft of hair round the neck, often used as a guard dog
- examining magistrate — (in some countries with inquisitorial legal systems) a judge who investigates cases and decides whether there is a case to answer in court
- false solomon's-seal — any of several plants belonging to the genus Smilacina, of the lily family, having long, arching clusters of greenish-white flowers.
- financial instrument — A financial instrument is a document or contract that can be traded in a market, that represents an asset to one party and a liability or equity to the other.
- financial statements — Financial statements are all of the reports that show how a company is performing for a certain period.
- finite state grammar — a simplified form of transformational grammar devised by Noam Chomsky
- finite state machine — (mathematics, algorithm, theory) (FSM or "Finite State Automaton", "transducer") An abstract machine consisting of a set of states (including the initial state), a set of input events, a set of output events, and a state transition function. The function takes the current state and an input event and returns the new set of output events and the next state. Some states may be designated as "terminal states". The state machine can also be viewed as a function which maps an ordered sequence of input events into a corresponding sequence of (sets of) output events. A deterministic FSM (DFA) is one where the next state is uniquely determinied by a single input event. The next state of a nondeterministic FSM (NFA) depends not only on the current input event, but also on an arbitrary number of subsequent input events. Until these subsequent events occur it is not possible to determine which state the machine is in. It is possible to automatically translate any nondeterministic FSM into a deterministic one which will produce the same output given the same input. Each state in the DFA represents the set of states the NFA might be in at a given time. In a probabilistic FSM [proper name?], there is a predetermined probability of each next state given the current state and input (compare Markov chain). The terms "acceptor" and "transducer" are used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising a language (certain sequences of input events). An acceptor has a single Boolean output and accepts or rejects the input sequence by outputting true or false respectively, whereas a transducer translates the input into a sequence of output events. FSMs are used in computability theory and in some practical applications such as regular expressions and digital logic design. See also state transition diagram, Turing Machine.
- first-cause argument — an argument for the existence of God, asserting the necessity of an uncaused cause of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- football hooliganism — the actions or behaviour of a football hooligan
- force someone's hand — to force someone to act
- fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
- formative assessment — ongoing assessment of a pupil's educational development within a particular subject area
- frame check sequence — (communications) (FCS) The extra characters added to a frame for error detection and correction(?). FCS is used in X.25, HDLC, Frame Relay, and other data link layer protocols.
- fuming sulfuric acid — an oily, hygroscopic, corrosive liquid, H 2 S 2 O 7 , that, depending on purity, is colorless or dark brown: used chiefly as a dehydrating agent in the manufacture of explosives and as a sulfating or sulfonating agent in the manufacture of dyes.
- fundamental constant — a physical constant, such as the gravitational constant or speed of light, that plays a fundamental role in physics and chemistry and usually has an accurately known value
- fundamental research — research carried out to deepen understanding of the fundamental or basic principles of something
- fundamental sequence — an infinite sequence, x 1 , x 2 , …, whose terms are points in Ek, in which there exists a point y such that the limit as n goes to infinity of xn = y if and only if for every ε>0, there exists a number N such that i > N and j > N implies | xi − xj |< ε. Also called Cauchy sequence, convergent sequence. Compare complete (def 10b).
- gastroduodenostomies — Plural form of gastroduodenostomy.
- generative semantics — a theory of generative grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can then be derived using only one set of rules that relate underlying meaning and surface form rather than separate sets of semantic and syntactic rules.