17-letter words containing n, o, m, y
- political economy — a social science dealing with political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on social institutions.
- polymorphonuclear — (of a leukocyte) having a lobulate nucleus.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- primary dentition — the deciduous dentition
- primary education — junior, elementary schooling
- primary intention — Logic. See under intention (def 5a).
- primary-intention — an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.
- 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
- 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.
- reiter's syndrome — a disease of unknown cause, occurring primarily in adult males, marked by urethritis, conjunctivitis, and arthritis.
- repertory company — repertory (def 2).
- republic of yemen — Republic of, a country in S Arabia, formed in 1990 by the merger of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. 207,000 sq. mi. (536,130 sq. km). Capital: Aden.
- role-playing game — a game in which participants adopt the roles of imaginary characters in an adventure under the direction of a Game Master.
- ross and cromarty — a historic county in NW Scotland.
- semimicroanalysis — any analytical method in which the weight of the sample is between 10 and 100 milligrams.
- socioeconomically — of, relating to, or signifying the combination or interaction of social and economic factors: socioeconomic study; socioeconomic status.
- 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)
- 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.
- stand on ceremony — to insist on or act with excessive formality
- statutory meeting — company shareholders' discussion
- steamship company — a company which has a fleet of steamships
- steering geometry — Steering geometry is the geometric arrangement of the parts of a steering system, and the value of the lengths and angles within it.
- suction lipectomy — the removal of fatty tissue by making a small incision in the skin, loosening the fat layer, and withdrawing it by suction.
- sunbury-on-thames — a town in SE England, in N Surrey. Pop: 27 415 (2001)
- superaerodynamics — the branch of aerodynamics that deals with gases at very low densities.
- surprise symphony — the Symphony No. 94 in G major (1791) by Franz Josef Haydn.
- survivor syndrome — a characteristic group of symptoms, including recurrent images of death, depression, persistent anxiety, and emotional numbness, occurring in survivors of disaster.
- sydenham's chorea — a form of chorea affecting children, often associated with rheumatic fever
- symbolic language — a specialized language dependent upon the use of symbols for communication and created for the purpose of achieving greater exactitude, as in symbolic logic or mathematics.
- synchronous motor — a synchronous machine that acts as a motor.
- synovial membrane — anatomy: connective tissue
- temporary account — A temporary account is an account which is closed out at the end of the year.
- tenancy in common — a holding of property, usually real, by two or more persons with each owning an undivided share and with no right of survivorship.
- terminal velocity — Physics. the velocity at which a falling body moves through a medium, as air, when the force of resistance of the medium is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the force of gravity. the maximum velocity of a body falling through a viscous fluid.
- tertiary consumer — a carnivore at the topmost level in a food chain that feeds on other carnivores; an animal that feeds only on secondary consumers.
- testimony meeting — a meeting at which persons give testimonies of religious faith and related religious experiences.
- the underemployed — underemployed people
- theory of numbers — number theory.
- to lose your mind — If you say that someone is losing their mind, you mean that they are becoming mad.
- to open your mind — If something opens your mind to new ideas or experiences, it makes you more willing to accept them or try them.
- to slip your mind — If something slips your mind, you forget it.
- tourette syndrome — a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent involuntary movements, including multiple neck jerks and sometimes vocal tics, as grunts, barks, or words, especially obscenities.
- tridimensionality — having three dimensions.
- turner's syndrome — an abnormal congenital condition resulting from a defect on or absence of the second sex chromosome, characterized by retarded growth of the gonads.
- uncompassionately — having or showing compassion: a compassionate person; a compassionate letter.
- uncomprehendingly — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- unconformity trap — An unconformity trap is a hydrocarbon trap where the closure is made by an unconformity (= a formation of rock layers which represents a gap in the geological record).
- unemployment line — When people talk about the unemployment line, they are talking about the state of being unemployed, especially when saying how many people are unemployed.