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22-letter words containing m, i, c, r

  • manner of articulation — the degree of obstruction or the type of channel imposed upon the passage of air at a given place of articulation, as denoted by such categories as stop, fricative, nasal, and semivowel.
  • manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
  • marketing intelligence — information about markets that can be used in marketing
  • master warrant officer — a noncommissioned officer in the Canadian forces junior to a chief warrant officer
  • maxwell air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SE central Alabama, NW of Montgomery: site of U.S. Air Force Advanced School.
  • mcculloch-pitts neuron — (artificial intelligence)   The basic building block of artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.
  • mechanical engineering — the branch of engineering dealing with the design and production of machinery.
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • microspectrophotometer — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
  • microspectrophotometry — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
  • microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
  • middle-distance runner — someone who runs races of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
  • million electron volts — a unit of energy equal to the energy acquired by an electron in falling through a potential of 10 6 volts. Abbreviation: MeV .
  • miscarriage of justice — law: wrongful judgement
  • mistress of ceremonies — a woman who directs the entertainment at a party, dinner, or the like.
  • modified american plan — (in hotels) a system of paying a single fixed rate that covers room, breakfast, and one other meal, usually dinner. Abbreviation: MAP.
  • molecular distillation — a vacuum distillation in which the molecules of the distillate reach the condenser before colliding with one another.
  • mother carey's chicken — any of various small petrels, especially the stormy petrel, Oceanites oceanicus.
  • motorcycle combination — a motorcycle with a sidecar attached
  • motoring correspondent — a journalist who reviews and writes about cars
  • mpeg-2 aac low profile — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format)   A successor of MP3 allowing transparent coding at data rates of 75-80% of that of MP3. It is very different from MP3, only used MDCT, no subband coding.
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • name service switching — Domain Name System
  • national semiconductor — (company)   A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
  • negative reinforcement — form of conditioning
  • nickel-cadmium battery — a storage battery, with an alkaline electrolyte, having nickel oxide as the positive element and cadmium as the negative.
  • no room to swing a cat — If you say 'There's no room to swing a cat' or 'You can't swing a cat', you mean that the place you are talking about is very small or crowded.
  • nominal semidestructor — (abuse)   Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
  • non-euclidean geometry — geometry based upon one or more postulates that differ from those of Euclid, especially from the postulate that only one line may be drawn through a given point parallel to a given line.
  • nonterminating decimal — a decimal numeral that does not end in an infinite sequence of zeros (contrasted with terminating decimal).
  • normal order reduction — Under this evaluation strategy an expression is evaluated by reducing the leftmost outermost redex first. This method will terminate for any expression for which termination is possible, whereas applicative order reduction may not. This method is equivalent to passing arguments unevaluated because arguments are initially to the right of functions applied to them. See also computational adequacy theorem.
  • oak processionary moth — a moth, (Thaumetopoea processionea), of the family Thaumetopoeidae, the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • ocean marine insurance — insurance covering risks involving the transporting of persons or goods on the high seas.
  • open network computing — (ONC) Sun's network protocols.
  • ousterhout's dichotomy — (language)   John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
  • para-aminobenzoic acid — part of the folic acid molecule, a white or yellowish, crystalline, slightly water-soluble solid, C 7 H 7 NO 2 , the para isomer of aminobenzoic acid: used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes and pharmaceuticals and in sunscreens to protect against ultraviolet light. Abbreviation: PABA.
  • paracoccidioidomycosis — a chronic infection caused by the fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, occurring in Mexico and in Central and South America, characterized by mouth and throat ulcers, weight loss, and lesions on the skin, intestines, and genitals.
  • parliamentary election — an election to select the members of a national parliament
  • paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
  • particular affirmative — a proposition of the form “Some S is P.” Symbol: I.
  • percussive maintenance — (jargon)   The fine art of whacking a device to get it working, possibly using a fine adjuster.
  • polymyalgia rheumatica — a chronic inflammatory disease, common among older persons, characterized by recurrent episodes of muscle pain and stiffness, sometimes leading to cardiovascular complications or blindness.
  • poor richard's almanac — an almanac (1732–58) written and published by Benjamin Franklin.
  • positive reinforcement — encouragement
  • post office department — former name of United States Postal Service.
  • potassium ferricyanide — a bright-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 3 Fe(CN) 6 , used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, as Prussian blue, and of paper, especially blueprint paper.
  • potassium ferrocyanide — a lemon-yellow, crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 4 Fe(CN) 6 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in casehardening alloys having an iron base and in dyeing wool and silk.
  • practice makes perfect — If you say 'practice makes perfect', you mean that it is possible to learn something or develop a skill if you practise enough. People often say this to encourage someone to keep practising.
  • preventive maintenance — (PM) To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance, scratch monkey.
  • primary rate interface — (PRI) A type of ISDN connection. In North America and Japan, this consists of 24 channels, usually divided into 23 B channels and 1 D channel, and runs over the same physical interface as T1. Elsewhere the PRI has 31 user channels, usually divided into 30 B channels and 1 D channel and is based on the E1 interface. PRI is typically used for connections such as one between a PBX (private branch exchange, a telephone exchange operated by the customer of a telephone company) and a CO (central office, of the telephone company) or IXC (inter exchange carrier, a long distance telephone company).
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