10-letter words containing m, e, t, a
- bar magnet — a bar-shaped, usually permanent, magnet.
- bare metal — 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an operating system, an HLL, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase "programming on the bare metal", which refers to the arduous work of bit bashing needed to create these basic tools for a new computer. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot PROMs and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new computer a real development environment. 2. "Programming on the bare metal" is also used to describe a style of hand-hacking that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, especially tricks for speed and space optimisation that rely on crocks such as overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in The Story of Mel, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimise fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs of programming time and computer resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems, and in the code of hackers who just can't let go of that low-level control. See Real Programmer. In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming is often considered a Good Thing, or at least a necessary evil (because these computers have often been sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necessary; see ill-behaved). There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS interface and writing the application to directly access device registers and computer addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal." People who can do this sort of thing well are held in high regard.
- barometers — Plural form of barometer.
- barometric — Barometric pressure is the atmospheric pressure that is shown by a barometer.
- base metal — A base metal is a metal such as copper, zinc, tin, or lead that is not a precious metal.
- batch mode — computer processing in which commands are input from a batch file, not interactively
- batchmates — Plural form of batchmate.
- bathometer — an instrument for measuring the depth of water
- bathymeter — An instrument used to measure the depth of water in oceans, seas, or lakes.
- bathymetry — measurement of the depth of an ocean or other large body of water
- battements — Plural form of battement.
- battlement — a parapet or wall with indentations or embrasures, originally for shooting through
- battlesome — argumentative; quarrelsome.
- baumeister — Willi [vil-ee] /ˈvɪl i/ (Show IPA), 1889–1955, German painter.
- baumgarten — Alexander Gottlieb. 1714–62, German philosopher, noted for his pioneering work on aesthetics, a term that he originated
- beam trawl — a trawl net whose lateral spread during trawling is maintained by a beam across its mouth.
- bee martin — kingbird.
- beech mast — the edible nuts of the beech, especially when lying on the ground.
- beefmaster — one of a breed of fast-growing beef cattle of the western U.S., tolerant of humidity, heat, and insects, developed by crossbreeding Brahman, Hereford, and Shorthorn stock.
- beetmaster — a help in need
- bell metal — an alloy of copper and tin, with some zinc and lead, used in casting bells
- benthamism — the philosophy of utilitarianism as first expounded by Jeremy Bentham in terms of an action being good that has a greater tendency to augment the happiness of the community than to diminish it
- bestialism — the state of beasts
- betel palm — a tropical Asian feather palm, Areca catechu, with scarlet or orange fruits
- betty lamp — an Early American lamp, consisting of a shallow, covered basin filled with oil, tallow, etc., providing fuel for a wick housed in a teapotlike spout, and often hung by a hook or suspended from a chain.
- bichromate — dichromate
- bimaculate — marked with two spots.
- bimaternal — having the genetic material of two mothers but no father
- bimestrial — lasting for two months
- bimetallic — consisting of two metals
- birth name — the surname given a person at birth.
- bit stream — a simple contiguous sequence of binary digits transmitted continuously over a communications path; a sequence of data in binary form.
- black stem — a disease of plants, characterized by blackened stems and defoliation, caused by any of several fungi, as Ascochyta imperfecta or Mycosphaerella lethalis.
- blamestorm — (of colleagues in a business, government, etc) to meet in order to apportion blame for an error or failure
- blastoderm — the layer of cells that surrounds the blastocoel of a blastula
- blastomere — any of the cells formed by cleavage of a fertilized egg
- blogstream — the publication on the internet of content from weblogs rather than from mainstream media sources
- brain stem — the portion of the brain that is continuous with the spinal cord and comprises the medulla oblongata, pons, midbrain, and parts of the hypothalamus, functioning in the control of reflexes and such essential internal mechanisms as respiration and heartbeat.
- brewmaster — a person who is in charge of brewing beer in a brewery
- bus master — (architecture) The device in a computer which is driving the address bus and bus control signals at some point in time. In a simple architecture only the (single) CPU can be bus master but this means that all communications between ("slave") I/O devices must involve the CPU. More sophisticated architectures allow other capable devices (or multiple CPUs) to take turns at controling the bus. This allows, for example, a network controller card to access a disk controller directly while the CPU performs other tasks which do not require the bus, e.g. fetching code from its cache. Note that any device can drive data onto the data bus when the CPU reads from that device, but only the bus master drives the address bus and control signals. See also distributed kernel.
- bushmaster — a large greyish-brown highly venomous snake, Lachesis muta, inhabiting wooded regions of tropical America: family Crotalidae (pit vipers)
- bustamante — Anastasio [ah-nahs-tah-syaw] /ˌɑ nɑsˈtɑ syɔ/ (Show IPA), 1780–1853, Mexican military and political leader: president 1830–32, 1837–41.
- by mistake — accidentally, not on purpose
- cacomistle — a catlike omnivorous mammal, Bassariscus astutus, of S North America, related to but smaller than the raccoons: family Procyonidae, order Carnivora (carnivores). It has yellowish-grey fur and a long bushy tail banded in black and white
- cad system — A CAD system is a computer system for designing parts or products before they are manufactured.
- caecostomy — (surgery) An operation involving bringing the caecum through the abdominal wall, most often by a tube, and opening it for drainage or decompression, usually to treat an obstruction of the colon.
- cafetorium — a room, usually in a school or other educational institution, which serves both as a cafeteria and an auditorium
- cajolement — The act of cajoling or the state of being cajoled.
- calamities — a great misfortune or disaster, as a flood or serious injury.
- calumniate — to slander