22-letter words containing m, i, d, s
- fermi-dirac statistics — the branch of quantum statistics used to calculate the permitted energy arrangements of the particles in a system in terms of the exclusion principle
- field emission display — (hardware) (FED) A type of flat panel display in which field emitting cathodes bombard a phosphor coating causing it to emit light. A field emission display is similar to a cathode ray tube but only a few millimeters thick. They use a large array of fine metal tips or carbon nanotubes (which are the most efficient electron emitters known), to emit electrons through a process known as field emission. Many of these are behind each phosphor dot so FEDs do not display dead pixels like LCDs even if 20% of the emitters fail. Sony is researching FED because it is the flat-panel technology that comes closest to matching the picture of a CRT.
- fixed investment trust — unit trust (def 1).
- flushed with something — very excited because of some success or triumph
- foot-and-mouth disease — an acute, contagious, febrile disease of cattle, hogs, sheep, and other hoofed animals, caused by any of various rhinoviruses and characterized by vesicular eruptions in the mouth and about the hoofs, teats, and udder.
- fringed with something — having a specified thing around the edge
- geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
- geometric distribution — the distribution of the number, x, of independent trials required to obtain a first success: where the probability in each is p, the probability that x = r is p(1-p)r–1, where r = 1, 2, 3, …, with mean 1/p
- gross domestic product — gross national product excluding payments on foreign investments. Abbreviation: GDP.
- guided missile cruiser — a naval cruiser equipped with long-range guided missiles and missile launchers.
- hammersmith and fulham — a borough of Greater London on the River Thames: established in 1965 by the amalgamation of Fulham and Hammersmith. Pop: 174 200 (2003 est). Area: 16 sq km (6 sq miles)
- hawaiian standard time — the time used in the Hawaiian time zone
- here's mud in your eye — a humorous drinking toast
- hoof-and-mouth disease — foot-and-mouth disease.
- horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
- hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
- hybrid multiprocessing — (parallel) (HMP) The kind of multitasking which OS/2 supports. HMP provides some elements of symmetric multiprocessing, using add-on IBM software called MP/2. OS/2 SMP was planned for release in late 1993.
- in someone's bad books — regarded by someone with disfavour
- in your wildest dreams — If you say that you could not imagine a particular thing in your wildest dreams, you are emphasizing that you think it is extremely strange or unlikely.
- independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
- indeterminate sentence — a penalty, imposed by a court, that has relatively wide limits or no limits, as one of imprisonment for one to ten years.
- islamic fundamentalism — the belief or advocating of a conservative adherence to literal or traditional interpretations of the Qu'ran and the Sunnah
- jacquard, joseph-marie — Joseph-Marie Jacquard
- klinefelter's syndrome — an abnormal condition in which at least one extra X chromosome is present in a male: characterized by reduced or absent sperm production, small testicles, and in some cases enlarged breasts.
- limited access highway — expressway
- lord high commissioner — the Queen's representative
- lunar excursion module — lunar module. Abbreviation: LEM.
- manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
- meeting of (the) minds — an agreement
- merry wives of windsor — a comedy (1598–1602?) by Shakespeare.
- middle atlantic states — the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey
- 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
- mind one's p's and q's — to be careful to behave correctly and use polite or suitable language
- mind your own business — an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming.
- mind-your-own-business — baby's-tears.
- molecular distillation — a vacuum distillation in which the molecules of the distillate reach the condenser before colliding with one another.
- monday morning disease — azoturia (def 2).
- most significant digit — the digit farthest to the left in a number. Abbreviation: MSD.
- motoring correspondent — a journalist who reviews and writes about cars
- mountain standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, seven hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- national semiconductor — (company) A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
- nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
- 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-hodgkin's lymphoma — Pathology. any of several malignancies of the lymphatic system in which the cells characteristic of Hodgkin's disease are absent.
- of the first magnitude — of the greatest importance
- operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
- 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.
- 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.
- parker morris standard — (in Britain) a set of minimum criteria for good housing construction, design, and facilities, recommended by the 1961 report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Parker Morris. Subsequent governments have urged private and local authority house-builders to achieve these standards
- paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.