22-letter words containing m, i, e, t, c

mechanical ventilation — life-support provided by respirator
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 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
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.
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
multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
myalgic encephalopathy — a condition characterized by painful muscles, extreme fatigue, and general debility, sometimes occurring as a sequel to viral illness
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.
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-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
on someone's coattails — the back of the skirt on a man's coat or jacket.
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.
parliamentary election — an election to select the members of a national parliament
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.
pneumocystis pneumonia — a pulmonary infection caused by the protozoan Pneumocystis carinii, occurring as an opportunistic disease in persons with impaired immune systems, as AIDS victims. Abbreviation: PCP.
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.
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).
private-equity company — an organization that uses private equity to gain control of and manage companies
process cinematography — cinematography in which the main or foreground action or scene is superimposed on or combined with simulated or separately filmed background action or scenery to produce special visual effects.
productivity agreement — an agreement whereby the employees of an organization agree to changes which are intended to improve productivity in return for an increase in pay or other benefits
programmed instruction — a progressively monitored, step-by-step teaching method, employing small units of information or learning material and frequent testing, whereby the student must complete or pass one stage before moving on to the next.
public domain software — public domain
public limited company — A public limited company is the same as a public company. The abbreviation plc is used after such companies' names.
pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.
punctuated equilibrium — theory of, Biology. a hypothesis holding that the evolution of species proceeds in a characteristic pattern of relative stability for long periods of time interspersed with much shorter periods during which many species become extinct and new species emerge. Also called punctuationalism. Compare gradualism (def 3).
range of accommodation — the range of distance over which an object can be accurately focused on the retina by accommodation of the eye.

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