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20-letter words containing m, o, n, r

  • peremptory challenge — a formal objection to the service of a juror by a party to a criminal prosecution or a civil action that requires no showing of cause.
  • peremptory exception — a plea in bar of an action.
  • periodontal membrane — the collagenous, fibrous connective tissue between the cementum of the tooth and the alveolus.
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • personnel department — business: human resources
  • personnel management — the branch of management dealing with staff recruitment and matters relating to employees
  • pessimising compiler — /pes'*-mi:z"ing k*m-pi:l"r/ (Antonym of "optimising compiler") A compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimise the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.
  • pick someone's brain — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • pickwickian syndrome — an abnormality characterized by extreme obesity accompanied by sleepiness, hypoventilation, and polycythemia.
  • pico della mirandola — Count Giovanni [jaw-vahn-nee] /dʒɔˈvɑn ni/ (Show IPA), 1463–94, Italian humanist and writer.
  • polaroid land camera — any of several types of camera yielding a finished print by means of a special developing and processing technique that occurs inside the camera and takes only a few seconds to complete
  • polymorphic function — a function in a computer program that can deal with a number of different types of data
  • poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
  • population parameter — a quantity or statistical measure that, for a given population, is fixed and that is used as the value of a variable in some general distribution or frequency function to make it descriptive of that population: The mean and variance of a population are population parameters.
  • portfolio employment — the practice of working for several employers simultaneously rather than working full-time for a single employer
  • power of appointment — the authority granted by a donor to a donee to select the person or persons who are to enjoy property rights or income upon the death of the donor or of the donee or after the termination of existing rights or interests.
  • precision instrument — finely-tuned device
  • predicate nominative — (in Latin, Greek, and certain other languages) a predicate noun or adjective in the nominative case.
  • premenstrual tension — Premenstrual tension is the same as premenstrual syndrome. The abbreviation PMT is often used.
  • presentation manager — The elephantine graphical user interface to the OS/2 operating system.
  • price discrimination — the practice of offering identical goods to different buyers at different prices, when the goods cost the same.
  • pride of the morning — light mist or precipitation observed at sea in the morning and regarded as indicating a fine day.
  • prime number theorem — the theorem that the number of prime numbers less than or equal to a given number is approximately equal to the given number divided by its natural logarithm.
  • primitive polynomial — a polynomial that has content equal to 1. Compare content1 (def 11a).
  • prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
  • procedural agreement — regulations agreed between the parties to collective bargaining, defining the bargaining units, bargaining scope, procedures for collective bargaining, and the facilities to be provided to trade union representatives
  • production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
  • programming language — a high-level language used to write computer programs, as COBOL or BASIC, or, sometimes, an assembly language.
  • property development — the business of buying land and buildings and then making improvements to them so that their selling price exceeds the price paid for them
  • proprietary medicine — a drug or agent manufactured and distributed under a trade name
  • pseudoparenchymatous — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
  • psychometric testing — the use of psychometric tests, often as a selection method
  • public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
  • quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
  • quantum cryptography — a method of coding information based on quantum mechanics, which is said to be unbreakable
  • quantum field theory — any theory in which fields are treated by the methods of quantum mechanics; each field can then be regarded as consisting of particles of a particular kind, which may be created and annihilated.
  • radio interferometer — any of several different types of instrumentation designed to observe interference patterns of electromagnetic radiation at radio wavelengths: used in the discovery and measurement of radio sources in the atmosphere.
  • random access memory — RAM.
  • random-access memory — RAM.
  • raynaud's phenomenon — a secondary circulatory disorder, often associated with a primary vascular disease, characterized by changes of blood flow resulting in white, bluish, or red hands and feet
  • real-time processing — data-processing by a computer which receives constantly changing data, such as information relating to air-traffic control, travel booking systems, etc, and processes it sufficiently rapidly to be able to control the source of the data
  • recommended standard — (standard)   (RS) A series of EIA standards including EIA-232.
  • regional development — aid-giving to poorer areas or countries
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • reservations manager — A reservations manager at a hotel is responsible for the reservations at the hotel.
  • restriction fragment — a length of DNA cut from the strand by a restriction enzyme.
  • retinitis pigmentosa — degeneration of the retina manifested by night blindness and gradual loss of peripheral vision, eventually resulting in tunnel vision or total blindness.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • return from the dead — (jargon)   To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of no account.
  • return on investment — the amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested. Abbreviation: ROI.
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