20-letter words containing m, i, g, r, a, n
- generative semantics — a theory of generative grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can then be derived using only one set of rules that relate underlying meaning and surface form rather than separate sets of semantic and syntactic rules.
- give one's right arm — to be prepared to make any sacrifice
- give someone the air — a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and minute amounts of other gases that surrounds the earth and forms its atmosphere.
- gravimetric analysis — analysis by weight.
- green monkey disease — Marburg disease.
- green mountain state — Vermont (used as a nickname).
- harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
- hazard warning lamps — Hazard warning lamps are flashing lamps on each corner of a vehicle that are used to show the position of the vehicle if there has been a breakdown or an accident.
- hungarian bromegrass — a pasture grass, Bromus inermis, native to Europe, having smooth blades.
- information exchange — discussion that involves exchanging ideas and knowledge
- initial program load — (operating system) (IPL) The procedure used to (re-)start a computer system by copying the operating system kernel into main memory and running it. Part of the boot sequence.
- innerspring mattress — a mattress with built-in coil springs
- intelligent terminal — (hardware) (or "smart terminal", "programmable terminal") A terminal that often contains not only a keyboard and screen, but also comes with a disk drive and printer, so it can perform limited processing tasks when not communicating directly with the central computer. Some can be programmed by the user to perform many basic tasks, including both arithmetic and logic operations. In some cases, when the user enters data, the data will be checked for errors and some type of report will be produced. In addition, the valid data that is entered may be stored on the disk, it will be transmitted over communication lines to the central computer. An intelligent terminal may have enough computing capability to draw graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behaviour of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using said devices as displays. The term once meant any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned above, is called a dumb terminal. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate". This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. Compare hook.
- linage advertisement — advertisements which are costed and paid for according to the number of lines in them
- literate programming — (programming, text) Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
- logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
- longitudinal framing — a system for framing steel vessels in which light, closely spaced, longitudinal frames are connected by heavy, widely spaced transverse frames with deep webs.
- lymphogranulomatosis — widespread infectious granuloma of the lymphatic system.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- magnification factor — the size of a magnified image of an object divided by the size of the object itself
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
- malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
- marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
- marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
- mass-energy equation — the equation, E=mc2, formulated by Albert Einstein, expressing the equivalence between mass and energy, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light.
- matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- military engineering — the design, construction, etc, of military fortifications and communications
- minimum lending rate — the official interest rate charged by the Bank of England and below which it will refrain from lending money.
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
- morning glory family — the plant family Convulvulaceae, characterized by twining herbaceous vines, shrubs, and trees having alternate, simple, or compound leaves, funnel-shaped, often showy flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including bindweed, dodder, moonflower, morning glory, and sweet potato.
- most general unifier — (logic) If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- normal magnification — the magnification produced by a telescope or microscope such that the diameter of the exit pupil of the instrument is equal to the diameter of the pupil of the eye.
- omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
- ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.
- optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
- pan-american highway — a road system proposed in the 1920s linking nations of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Alaska to Santiago, Chile, with some gaps remaining in Panama and Colombia. The section between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Panama City is known as the Inter-American Highway Total length about 16,000 miles (25,744 km).
- paranoid programming — (programming) A programming style that tries to prepare for the worst external conditions, including incorrect input, resource limitations, hardware and software failure and even can't happen errors, to the fullest possible extent. While some believe in the motto "professional programming is paranoid programming", the expression usually has the connotation that the efforts are unnecessary or too costly ("Maybe this code is just paranoid programming, but I think it is necessary to avoid a possible overflow condition".)
- poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
- prenuptial agreement — A prenuptial agreement is a written contract made between a man and a woman before they marry, in which they state how their assets such as property and money should be divided if they get divorced.
- presentation manager — The elephantine graphical user interface to the OS/2 operating system.