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22-letter words containing m, y, e

  • 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
  • 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.
  • overstay one's welcome — to stay (at a party, on a visit, etc), longer than pleases the host or hostess
  • parliamentary election — an election to select the members of a national parliament
  • passive matrix display — (hardware)   A type of liquid crystal display which relies on persistence to maintain the state of each display element (pixel) between refresh scans. The resolution of such displays is limited by the ratio between the time to set a pixel and the time it takes to fade. Contrast active matrix display.
  • planetary transmission — A planetary transmission is a special form of geared drive in which the input and output shafts are on the same axis.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
  • pressure relief system — A pressure relief system is a device or method for reducing pressure in vessels, stages, or equipment when pressure has increased above a particular limit.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • pyridostigmine bromide — a cholinesterase inhibitor, C 9 H 1 3 BrN 2 O 2 , used in its bromide form in the treatment of myasthenia gravis.
  • rapid deployment force — a U.S. military organization consisting of one Marine division and four Army divisions, established in 1979 to respond quickly to any distant threat to national interests.
  • refinery modernization — Refinery modernization is the process of making a refinery more modern by using new technology or processes.
  • remote reference layer — (protocol)   (RRL) Part of Java's Remote Method Invocation protocol. RRL exists in both the RMI client and server. It is used by the stub or skeleton protocol layer and uses the transport layer. RRL is reponsible for transport-independent functioning of RMI, such as connection management or unicast/multicast object invocation.
  • research systems, inc. — (RSI) Distributors of Interactive Data Language (IDL).
  • rheumatoid spondylitis — ankylosing spondylitis.
  • rocky mountain juniper — a juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, of western North America, that yields a soft, reddish wood used for making fences, pencils, etc., and that is also grown as an ornamental.
  • rocky mountain oysters — mountain oyster.
  • safety-critical system — A computer, electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may cause injury or death to human beings. E.g. an aircraft or nuclear power station control system. Common tools used in the design of safety-critical systems are redundancy and formal methods. See also aeroplane rule.
  • satisfiability problem — A problem used as an example in complexity theory. It can be stated thus: Given a Boolean expression E, decide if there is some assignment to the variables in E such that E is true. A Boolean expression is composed of Boolean variables, (logical) negation (NOT), (logical) conjunction (AND) and parentheses for grouping. The satisfiability problem was the first problem to be proved to be NP-complete (by Cook).
  • secondary spermatocyte — See under spermatocyte.
  • sick building syndrome — an illness caused by exposure to pollutants or germs inside an airtight building.
  • social security number — A Social Security number is a nine digit number that is given to U.S. citizens and to people living in the U.S. You need it to get a job, collect Social Security benefits and receive some government services.
  • somatic nervous system — the section of the nervous system responsible for sensation and control of the skeletal muscles
  • special delivery stamp — a stamp of special design, having a value indicating an extra fee in addition to the regular postage, and affixed to an item of mail to ensure its special delivery.
  • speckle interferometry — a photographic technique for clarifying the telescopic images of a star by taking short exposures of the electronic images of the star's speckle pattern and extrapolating properties of the starlight to create a more accurate composite image.
  • spectrophotometrically — an instrument for making photometric comparisons between parts of spectra.
  • spherical trigonometry — the branch of trigonometry that deals with spherical triangles.
  • stereospecific polymer — an organic polymer in which the steric arrangements of groups on asymmetric carbon atoms occur in a regular sequence
  • student volunteer army — a students' voluntary organization that aims to undertake useful work in communities, founded in 2010 to help clear up after a damaging earthquake in Christchurch
  • sun microsystems, inc. — (company)   One of the first, and now biggest, US computer manufacturers. They also manufacture in Europe. The Sun-2 and 3 series of workstations and servers were based on the Motorola 680x0 family of microprocessors and the Sun-4 series on the SPARC. Sun also produce their own version of Unix, originally called SunOS and now Solaris. Their Network File System has become the de facto standard for sharing files between Unix systems. Sun own MySQL AB. Sun was bought by Oracle Corporation on 2009-04-20. Quarterly sales $1403M, profits $78M (Aug 1994). Address: 2550 Garcia Ave., Mt. View, CA 94043 -1100 USA.
  • supplementary question — a question asked in Parliament by an MP during Questions to the Prime Minister
  • sweet william catchfly — a southern European plant, Silene armeria, of the pink family, having a flat-topped cluster of pink flowers.
  • sympathetic ophthalmia — inflammation of one eye due to injury or disease of the other eye.
  • system account manager — (cryptography, operating system, security)   (SAM) A password database stored as a registry file in Windows NT and Windows 2000. The System Account Manager (SAM) database stores users' passwords in a hashed format. Since a hash function is one-way, this provides some measure of security for the storage of the passwords. In an attempt to enhance the security of the SAM database against offline cracking, Microsoft introduced the SYSKEY utility in Windows NT 4.0.
  • system management mode — (hardware)   (SMM) A reduced power consumption state provided by some Intel microprocessors. When a CPU enters SMM it saves its current state in a special area of static RAM called SMRAM (System Management RAM) and then runs a program, also stored in SMRAM, the SMM handler. SMM is implemented in all Intel "SL" suffixed CPUs. In June 1993, Intel announced it was discontinuing its SL range and instead making all its current processors SL enhanced. See also Auto Idle.
  • take the mickey out of — to deflate (a person)
  • temporal lobe epilepsy — a type of seizure disorder produced by abnormal electric discharges in the temporal lobe of the brain, characterized by the occurrence of any of a variety of auras followed by a brief loss of consciousness with accompanying repetitive, automatic movements.
  • temporal-lobe epilepsy — a type of seizure disorder produced by abnormal electric discharges in the temporal lobe of the brain, characterized by the occurrence of any of a variety of auras followed by a brief loss of consciousness with accompanying repetitive, automatic movements.
  • temporary life annuity — an annuity that ceases upon the death of the annuitant or upon the expiration of a period of time, whichever occurs first.
  • the continental system — Napoleon's plan in 1806 to blockade Britain by excluding her ships from ports on the mainland of Europe
  • the emergency services — the public organizations whose job is to take quick action to deal with emergencies when they occur, especially the fire brigade, the police, and the ambulance service
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