15-letter words containing m, e, t, s
- hopeful monster — a hypothetical individual organism that, by means of a fortuitous macromutation permitting an adaptive shift to a new mode of life, becomes the founder of a new type of organism and a vehicle of macroevolution.
- hopper casement — a casement with a sash hinged at the bottom.
- horner's method — a technique, involving successive substitutions, for approximating the real roots of an equation with real coefficients.
- housemistresses — Plural form of housemistress.
- human relations — the study of group behavior for the purpose of improving interpersonal relationships, as among employees.
- hunt the wumpus — (games, history) (Or "Wumpus") /wuhm'p*s/ A famous fantasy computer game, created by Gregory Yob in about 1973. Hunt the Wumpus appeared in Creative Computing, Vol 1, No 5, Sep - Oct 1975, where Yob says he had come up with the game two years previously, after seeing the grid-based games Hurkle, Snark and Mugwump at People's Computing Company (PCC). He later delivered Wumpus to PCC who published it in their newsletter. ESR says he saw a version including termites running on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1972-3. Magnus Olsson, in his 1992-07-07 USENET article <[email protected]>, posted the BASIC source code of what he believed was pretty much the version that was published in 1973 in David Ahl's "101 Basic Computer Games", by Digital Equipment Corporation. The wumpus lived somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph (later versions supported other topologies, including an icosahedron and M"obius strip). The player started somewhere at random in the cave with five "crooked arrows"; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms, and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and drop you at a random location (later versions added "anaerobic termites" that ate arrows, bat migrations and earthquakes that randomly changed pit locations). This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even older Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like setting and its terse, amusing messages, it prefigured ADVENT and Zork and was directly ancestral to both (Zork acknowledged this heritage by including a super-bat colony). There have been many ports including one distributed with SunOS, a freeware one for the Macintosh and a C emulation by ESR.
- hypercatabolism — an abnormally high metabolic breakdown of a substance or tissue which leads to weight loss and physical deterioration
- hypermetabolism — Biology, Physiology. the sum of the physical and chemical processes in an organism by which its material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available. Compare anabolism, catabolism.
- hyperparasitism — an organism that is parasitic on or in another parasite.
- hyperpotassemia — hyperkalemia.
- hyperthyroidism — overactivity of the thyroid gland.
- ignition system — the system in an internal-combustion engine that produces the spark to ignite the mixture of fuel and air: includes the battery, ignition coil, distributor, spark plugs, and associated switches and wiring.
- illimitableness — The quality of being illimitable; absence of limits.
- immeasurability — Immeasurableness.
- immensurability — The quality of being immensurable.
- immunoadsorbent — immunosorbent.
- immunochemistry — the study of the chemistry of immunologic substances and reactions.
- immunoreactions — Plural form of immunoreaction.
- impact adhesive — a glue designed to give adhesion when two coated surfaces are pressed together
- imperfect stage — a phase in the life cycle of certain fungi in which either no spores or asexual spores, as conidia, are produced.
- imperial system — a system of measurement units, including the foot, pound, and second, as well as miles and yards
- imperishability — not subject to decay; indestructible; enduring.
- imperscriptible — not supported by written authority
- implementations — Plural form of implementation.
- implicativeness — the state or quality of being implicative
- implied consent — a manifestation of consent to something through conduct, including inaction or silence.
- importunateness — Quality of being importunate.
- impossibilities — Plural form of impossibility.
- imprescriptable — Alt form imprescriptible.
- imprescriptible — not subject to prescription.
- imprescriptibly — In an imprescriptible manner; obviously.
- impressionistic — a person who follows or adheres to the theories, methods, and practices of impressionism, especially in the fields of painting, music, or literature.
- improvvisatrice — Alternative form of improvisatrice.
- impulse turbine — a turbine moved by free jets of fluid striking the blades of the rotor together with the axial flow of fluid through the rotor.
- in mid-sentence — halfway through saying sth
- in the doldrums — miserable, depressed
- in the midst of — amid, among
- in the same way — similarly
- incrementalists — Plural form of incrementalist.
- indeterministic — the doctrine that human actions, though influenced somewhat by preexisting psychological and other conditions, are not entirely governed by them but retain a certain freedom and spontaneity.
- indomitableness — Quality of being indomitable.
- inertial system — a frame of reference in which a body remains at rest or moves with constant linear velocity unless acted upon by forces: any frame of reference that moves with constant velocity relative to an inertial system is itself an inertial system.
- infinitesimally — indefinitely or exceedingly small; minute: infinitesimal vessels in the circulatory system.
- informativeness — giving information; instructive: an informative book.
- inhomogeneities — lack of homogeneity.
- inspection arms — a position in military drill in which the missile chamber of a weapon is open for inspection.
- instalment plan — agreed series of repayments
- instant message — an electronic message sent in real time via the Internet and therefore immediately available for display on the recipient's screen. Compare text message.
- instrumentalism — the variety of pragmatism developed by John Dewey, maintaining that the truth of an idea is determined by its success in the active solution of a problem and that the value of ideas is determined by their function in human experience.
- instrumentalist — a person who plays a musical instrument.