18-letter words containing m, r, s, a
- impressionableness — The quality of being impressionable.
- in abraham's bosom — at rest with one's dead ancestors
- in comparison with — when compared to
- in inverted commas — If you say in inverted commas after a word or phrase, you are indicating that it is inaccurate or unacceptable in some way, or that you are quoting someone else.
- in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
- in the same breath — the air inhaled and exhaled in respiration.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- indiscriminateness — The state of being indiscriminate.
- indiscriminatingly — In an indiscriminating manner.
- industrial diamond — a small often synthetic diamond, valueless as a gemstone, used in cutting tools, abrasives, etc
- information island — (jargon) A body of information (i.e. electronic files) that needs to be shared but has no network connection.
- information system — a computer system or set of components for collecting, creating, storing, processing, and distributing information, typically including hardware and software, system users, and the data itself: the use of information systems to solve business problems.
- infrared astronomy — the study of infrared radiation emitted by celestial objects.
- inner automorphism — an automorphism that maps an element x into an element of the form axa −1 where a −1 is the inverse of a.
- inseam measurement — (in tailoring) the measurement on a pair of trousers or on a person of the inside leg from the crotch to the ankle
- instruction manual — how-to, usage guide
- instrument landing — an aircraft landing accomplished by use of gauges on the instrument panel and ground-based radio equipment, with limited reference to outside visual signals.
- instrument station — station (def 14a).
- insurance salesman — male: sells insurance
- investment manager — financial advisor
- involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
- isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
- james baird weaver — James Baird, 1833–1912, U.S. politician: congressman 1879–81, 1885–89.
- james-lange theory — a theory that emotions are caused by bodily sensations; for example, we are sad because we weep
- japanese andromeda — an Asian evergreen shrub, Pieris japonica, of the heath family, having broad, glossy leaves and drooping clusters of whitish blossoms.
- japanese persimmon — the soft, orange or reddish, edible fruit of an Asian tree, Diospyros kaki.
- jerusalem syndrome — a delusive condition affecting some visitors to Jerusalem in which the sufferer identifies with a major figure from his or her religious background
- jose de san martin — José de [haw-se th e] /hɔˈsɛ ðɛ/ (Show IPA), 1778–1850, South American general and statesman, born in Argentina: leader in winning independence for Argentina, Peru, and Chile; protector of Peru 1821–22.
- justice department — the United States federal department for enforcing federal laws
- king james version — Authorized Version.
- king william's war — the war (1689–97) in which England and its American colonies and Indian allies opposed France and its Indian allies and which constituted the American phase of the War of the Grand Alliance.
- kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
- komsomolsk-on-amur — city in SE Russia, on the Amur River: pop. 309,000
- lagrange's theorem — the theorem that the order of each subgroup of a finite group is a factor of the order of the group.
- lambda abstraction — A term in lambda-calculus denoting a function. A lambda abstraction begins with a lower-case lambda (represented as "\" in this document), followed by a variable name (the "bound variable"), a full stop and a lambda expression (the body). The body is taken to extend as far to the right as possible so, for example an expression, \ x . \ y . x+y is read as \ x . (\ y . x+y). A nested abstraction such as this is often abbreviated to: \ x y . x + y The lambda expression (\ v . E) denotes a function which takes an argument and returns the term E with all free occurrences of v replaced by the actual argument. Application is represented by juxtaposition so (\ x . x) 42 represents the identity function applied to the constant 42. A lambda abstraction in Lisp is written as the symbol lambda, a list of zero or more variable names and a list of zero or more terms, e.g. (lambda (x y) (plus x y)) Lambda expressions in Haskell are written as a backslash, "\", one or more patterns (e.g. variable names), "->" and an expression, e.g. \ x -> x.
- lay down your arms — If soldiers lay down their arms, they stop fighting and give up their weapons.
- literae humaniores — (at Oxford University) the faculty concerned with Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and philosophy; classics
- literal-mindedness — the quality or state of tending to take words in their literal sense
- literary criticism — study and review of literature
- logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
- logarithmus dualis — (mathematics) (ld) Latin for logarithm base two. More commonly written as "log" with a subscript "2". Roughly the number of bits required to represent an integer.
- loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
- lose one's marbles — If you say that someone has lost their marbles, you mean that their ideas or behaviour are very strange, as if they have become insane.
- low-start mortgage — a mortgage in which interest only is repaid for a fixed period at the outset, to make it more affordable
- maclaurin's series — an infinite sum giving the value of a function f(x) in terms of the derivatives of the function evaluated at zero: f(x) = f(0) + (f′(0)x)/1! + (f″(0)x2)/2! + …
- macro preprocessor — preprocessor
- macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.
- madagascar jasmine — a Madagascan twining, woody vine, Stephanotis floribunda, of the milkweed family, having waxy-white, fragrant flowers.
- magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
- magistrate's court — a court having limited jurisdiction over minor civil and criminal matters, as matters of contract not exceeding a particular amount of money.