0%

17-letter words containing n, a, m, h

  • organic chemistry — the branch of chemistry, originally limited to substances found only in living organisms, dealing with the compounds of carbon.
  • orthogonal matrix — a matrix that is the inverse of its transpose so that any two rows or any two columns are orthogonal vectors
  • parachute payment — a payment made to alleviate hardship resulting from a sudden loss of income
  • parmesan (cheese) — a very hard, dry cheese orig. of Italy, made from skimmed cow's milk and usually grated for sprinkling on pasta, soups, etc.
  • pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
  • pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
  • peaches and cream — If you say that a woman or a girl has a peaches and cream complexion, you mean that she has very clear, smooth, pale skin.
  • phantom limb pain — a phenomenon characterized by the experience of pain, discomfort, or other sensation in the area of a missing limb or other body part, as a breast.
  • phantom pregnancy — the occurrence of signs of pregnancy, such as enlarged abdomen and absence of menstruation, when no embryo is present, due to hormonal imbalance
  • phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
  • phenylformic acid — benzoic acid.
  • phumiphon aduldet — (Phumiphon Aduldet; Bhumibol Adulyadej) born 1927, king of Thailand since 1946.
  • physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
  • physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
  • 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.
  • ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
  • polymorphonuclear — (of a leukocyte) having a lobulate nucleus.
  • portmanteau morph — a phonological unit of more than one morpheme, as French au to (him) from a to + le masculine article, which realizes a preposition and the definite article; a single morph that is analyzed as representing two underlying morphemes.
  • pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
  • put on the market — offer for sale
  • quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
  • quantum mechanics — a theory of the mechanics of atoms, molecules, and other physical systems that are subject to the uncertainty principle. Abbreviation: QM.
  • racial harassment — persecution on the basis of race
  • relative pathname — (file system)   A path relative to the working directory. Its first character can be anything but the pathname separator.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • second-hand smoke — from sb else's cigarette
  • seventh amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing trial by jury.
  • sexual harassment — unwelcome sexual advances made by an employer or superior, especially when compliance is made a condition of continued employment or advancement.
  • shower attachment — a device fixed to taps to make a shower
  • sixth commandment — “Thou shalt not kill”: sixth of the Ten Commandments.
  • smarandache logic — neutrosophic logic
  • snatch one's time — to leave a job, taking whatever pay is due
  • south farmingdale — a town on central Long Island, in SE New York.
  • south sea company — a British joint stock company that traded in South America in the 18th century. The South Sea Company took over the national debt in return for a monopoly of trade with the South Seas, causing feverish speculation in their stocks, and a financial crash in 1720 (the South Sea Bubble)
  • southampton water — an inlet of the English Channel in S England
  • spiny-headed worm — any of a small group of endoparasites of the phylum Acanthocephala, as larvae parasitic in insects and crustaceans and as adults in various vertebrates.
  • spongy parenchyma — the lower layer of the ground tissue of a leaf, characteristically containing irregularly shaped cells with relatively few chloroplasts and large intercellular spaces.
  • squeegee merchant — a person who attempts to make money by squeegeeing the windscreens of cars that are stopped at traffic lights and then asking for payment
  • steamship company — a company which has a fleet of steamships
  • stymphalian birds — a flock of predacious birds of Arcadia that were driven away and killed by Hercules as one of his labors.
  • sunbury-on-thames — a town in SE England, in N Surrey. Pop: 27 415 (2001)
  • support mechanism — any formal system or method of providing support or assistance
  • sydenham's chorea — a form of chorea affecting children, often associated with rheumatic fever
  • telephone message — a message that is transmitted by telephone
  • tenth commandment — “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's”: tenth of the Ten Commandments.
  • the establishment — a group or class of people having institutional authority within a society, esp those who control the civil service, the government, the armed forces, and the Church: usually identified with a conservative outlook
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?