17-letter words containing m, i, s, o, n
- on someone's mind — occupying someone's thoughts
- on someone's tail — following or shadowing someone closely
- on speaking terms — the act, utterance, or discourse of a person who speaks.
- one-time password — (security) (OTP) A security system that requires a new password every time a user authenticates themselves, thus protecting against an intruder replaying an intercepted password. OTP generates passwords using either the MD4 or MD5 hashing algorithms. The equivalent term "S/Key", developed by Bellcore, is a trademark of Telcordia Technologies, so the name OTP is used increasingly. See RFC 1760 - "The S/KEY One-Time Password System" and RFC 1938 - "A One-Time Password System".
- opening arguments — the statements or arguments provided by lawyers at the beginning of a trial
- optical astronomy — the branch of observational astronomy using telescopes to observe or photograph celestial objects in visible light.
- organic chemistry — the branch of chemistry, originally limited to substances found only in living organisms, dealing with the compounds of carbon.
- otto von bismarck — Otto von [ot-oh von;; German aw-toh fuh n] /ˈɒt oʊ vɒn;; German ˈɔ toʊ fən/ (Show IPA), 1815–98, German statesman: first chancellor of modern German Empire 1871–90.
- out of commission — the act of committing or entrusting a person, group, etc., with supervisory power or authority.
- out of one's mind — (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
- over-compensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
- pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
- pernicious anemia — Pernicious anemia is a very severe blood disease.
- persistent memory — non-volatile storage
- photo-composition — any method of composition using photography, as composition by means of a photocomposer.
- photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
- plains of abraham — a high plain adjoining the city of Quebec, Canada: battlefield where the English under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in 1759.
- postimpressionism — a varied development of Impressionism by a group of painters chiefly between 1880 and 1900 stressing formal structure, as with Cézanne and Seurat, or the expressive possibilities of form and color, as with Van Gogh and Gauguin.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- precision bombing — aerial bombing in which bombs are dropped, as accurately as possible, on a specific, usually small, target.
- premonstratensian — a member of a religious order founded at Prémontré in N France in 1120 by St Norbert (about 1080–1134)
- presentationalism — a style of production in which the audience is addressed directly with songs, skits, exposition, etc., and no attempt is made at realism.
- production system — (programming) A production system consists of a collection of productions (rules), a working memory of facts and an algorithm, known as forward chaining, for producing new facts from old. A rule becomes eligible to "fire" when its conditions match some set of elements currently in working memory. A conflict resolution strategy determines which of several eligible rules (the conflict set) fires next. A condition is a list of symbols which represent constants, which must be matched exactly; variables which bind to the thing they match and "<> symbol" which matches a field not equal to symbol. Example production systems are OPS5, CLIPS, flex.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- proton microscope — a powerful type of microscope that uses a beam of protons, giving high resolution and sharp contrast
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- recoil escapement — anchor escapement.
- reconstructionism — a 20th-century movement among U.S. Jews, founded by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, advocating that Judaism, being a culture and way of life as well as a religion, is in sum a religious civilization requiring constant adaptation to contemporary conditions so that Jews can identify more readily and meaningfully with the Jewish community.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- reformed spelling — a revised orthography intended to simplify the spelling of English words, especially to eliminate unpronounced letters, as by substituting thru for through, tho for though, slo for slow, etc.
- reiter's syndrome — a disease of unknown cause, occurring primarily in adult males, marked by urethritis, conjunctivitis, and arthritis.
- renaissance woman — a woman who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field.
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- roman catholicism — the faith, practice, and system of government of the Roman Catholic Church.
- roving commission — authority or power given in a general area, without precisely defined terms of reference
- saint elmo's fire — corona discharge.
- saint-simonianism — the socialist system advocated by the Comte de Saint-Simon
- samurai tradition — the body of customs, thought, practices, etc belonging to the samurai warrior caste of Japan
- sanctimoniousness — making a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, righteousness, etc.: They resented his sanctimonious comments on immorality in America.
- sandringham house — a residence of the royal family, in Sandringham, a village in E England, in Norfolk near the E shore of the Wash
- sandwich compound — any of a class of organometallic compounds whose molecules have a metal atom or ion bound between two plane parallel organic rings
- sawatch mountains — range of the Rocky Mountains, in central Colo.: highest peak, Elbert
- scientific method — a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data are gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from these data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested.