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21-letter words containing m, e, o, r, a

  • to bend someone's ear — If you say that someone is bending your ear about something, you mean that they keep talking to you about it because they think it is important; used especially when you are irritated by this.
  • to box someone's ears — If someone boxes a child's ears, they hit them on the side of their head as a punishment.
  • to have money to burn — If you say that someone has money to burn, you mean that they have more money than they need or that they spend their money on things that you think are unnecessary.
  • to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
  • to mix your metaphors — If you mix your metaphors, you use two conflicting metaphors. People do this accidentally, or sometimes deliberately as a joke.
  • to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
  • to take your mind off — If something takes your mind off a problem or unpleasant situation, it helps you to forget about it for a while.
  • transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
  • trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
  • triethyl orthoformate — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 16 O 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
  • tumor necrosis factor — a protein, produced in humans and other animals, that is destructive to cells showing abnormally rapid growth: identical with cachectin. Abbreviation: TNF.
  • ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
  • under one's own steam — If you do something under your own steam, you do it without any help from anyone else.
  • uniform business rate — a local tax in the UK paid by businesses, based on a local valuation of their premises and a rate fixed by central government that applies throughout the country
  • uniform resource name — (web)   (URN, previously Uniform/Universal Resource Number) 1. Any URI which is not a URL. 2. A particular scheme which is currently (1991-4) under development by the IETF, which should provide for the resolution using Internet protocols of names which have a greater persistence than that currently associated with Internet host names or organisations (as used in URLs). Uniform Resource Names will be URI schemes that improve on URLs in reliability over time, including authenticity, replication, and high availability. When defined, a URN in sense 1 will be an example of a URN in sense 2.
  • universal disk format — (storage, standard)   (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
  • virtual memory system — (operating system)   (VMS) DEC's proprietary operating system originally produced for its VAX minicomputer. VMS V1 was released in August 1978. VMS was renamed "OpenVMS" around version 5.5. The first version of VMS on DEC Alpha was known as OpenVMS for AXP V1.0, and the correct way to refer to the operating system now is OpenVMS for VAX or OpenVMS for Alpha. The renaming also signified the fact that the X/Open consortium had certified OpenVMS as having a high support for POSIX standards. VMS is one of the most secure operating systems on the market (making it popular in financial institutions). It currently (October 1997) has the best clustering capability (both number and distance) and is very scalable with binaries portable from small desktop workstations up to huge mainframes. Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favourite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious.
  • vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.
  • voluntary arrangement — a procedure enabling an insolvent company to come to an arrangement with its creditors and resolve its financial problems, often in compliance with a court order
  • volunteers of america — a religious reform and relief organization, similar to the Salvation Army, founded in New York City in 1896 by Ballington Booth, son of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Abbreviation: VOA.
  • warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
  • weak head normal form — (reduction, theory)   (WHNF) A lambda expression is in weak head normal form (WHNF) if it is a head normal form (HNF) or any lambda abstraction. I.e. the top level is not a redex. The term was coined by Simon Peyton Jones to make explicit the difference between head normal form (HNF) and what graph reduction systems produce in practice. A lambda abstraction with a reducible body, e.g. \ x . ((\ y . y+x) 2) is in WHNF but not HNF. To reduce this expression to HNF would require reduction of the lambda body: (\ y . y+x) 2 --> 2+x Reduction to WHNF avoids the name capture problem with its need for alpha conversion of an inner lambda abstraction and so is preferred in practical graph reduction systems. The same principle is often used in strict languages such as Scheme to provide call-by-name evaluation by wrapping an expression in a lambda abstraction with no arguments: D = delay E = \ () . E The value of the expression is obtained by applying it to the empty argument list:
  • weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
  • what price something? — what are the chances of something happening now?
  • william of malmesbury — William of, William of Malmesbury.
  • william the conqueror — ("the Conqueror") 1027–87, duke of Normandy 1035–87; king of England 1066–87 (son of Robert I, duke of Normandy).
  • workers' compensation — a government-sponsored insurance system, funded by contributions from employers, for compensating employees for injury or occupational disease suffered in connection with their employment
  • xeroderma pigmentosum — a rare inherited disease characterized by sensitivity to ultraviolet light, exposure resulting in lesions and tumors of the skin and eyes.
  • xilinx netlist format — (language, electronics)   (XNF) A Hardware Description Language for electronic circuit design, developed by Xilinx, Inc..
  • yellow-rumped warbler — a common North American wood warbler, Dendroica coronata, having yellow spots on the rump, crown, and sides, including a white-throated eastern subspecies (myrtle warbler) and a yellow-throated western subspecies (Audubon's warbler)
  • your mileage may vary — (jargon)   (YMMV) The disclaimer American car manufacturers attached to EPA mileage ratings. A humourous way of saying that the thing under discussion will not necessarily give you the same results as the author. Often used to convey the hardware dependence of Unix freeware distributions.
  • youth training scheme — (formerly, in Britain) a scheme, run by the Training Agency, to provide vocational training for unemployed 16–17-year-olds
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