26-letter words containing o, t, m, a, n
- many-worlds interpretation — an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on the idea that every possible event exists in its own world
- master of the king's music — (in Britain when the sovereign is male) a court post dating from the reign of Charles I. It is an honorary title and normally held by an established English composer
- mecklenburg-west pomerania — a state of NE Germany, along the Baltic coast: consists of the former state of Mecklenburg and those parts of W Pomerania not incorporated into Poland after World War II: part of East Germany until 1990. Pop: 1 732 000 (2003 est)
- methylene dioxyamphetamine — Pharmacology. MDA.
- metropolitan museum of art — the principal museum in New York City: founded in 1870 and housed in its present premises in Central Park since 1880
- michigan algorithm decoder — (language) (MAD) An early programming language, based on IAL, developed at the University of Michigan by R. Graham, Bruce Arden, and Bernard Galler in 1959. MAD was one of the first extensible languages: the user could define his own operators and data types. MAD ran on the IBM 704, IBM 709 and IBM 7090. It was ported to the IBM 7040 at the City College of New York by Robert Teitel and also to Philco, Univac and CDC computers.
- micro channel architecture — (architecture) (MCA) IBM's proprietary 32-bit bus, used in high-end PS/2 personal computers. Micro Channel is designed for multiprocessing. It eliminates potential conflicts that arise when installing new peripheral devices. MCA is *not* compatible with either EISA or XT bus architecture so older cards cannot be used with it. As with the ROM BIOS in the first IBM PCs, figuring out the Micro Channel's secrets has been an arduous task of reverse engineering ever since the PS/2 line was announced. Consequently, the MCA has never become as wide spread as the competing EISA standard.
- microcrystalline cellulose — Microcrystalline cellulose is a polymer used as a binder in tablets because it is stable, compressible, and disintegrates quickly.
- micronetics standard mumps — (MSM) A version of MUMPS for the IBM PC RT and R6000.
- monday morning quarterback — a person who criticizes the actions or decisions of others after the fact, using hindsight to assess situations and specify alternative solutions.
- money market (mutual) fund — a mutual fund which invests in short-term financial instruments, as treasury bills and commercial paper
- mongolian hordes technique — (programming, jargon) (Or "Chinese Army technique") Assigning a large number of inexperienced programmers to a job which would better performed by a few skilled ones. The term was first used by Dr. Fred Brooks in his book "The Mythical Man-Month", Chapter 3. According to Dr. Brooks, he had in mind the vision of the Mongol Hordes sweeping across Asia and Europe when he created the term.
- monobasic sodium phosphate — Chemistry. sodium phosphate (def 1).
- monochrome display adapter — (hardware, graphics) (MDA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PC. MDA can display only monochrome 80*25 text (IBM PC video mode 7). It is now obsolete.
- most-favored-nation clause — a clause in a commercial treaty or contract by which each signatory agrees to give the other the same treatment that is or will be accorded any other nation.
- multifactorial inheritance — polygenic inheritance.
- mushroom slab construction — beamless reinforced-concrete floor and roof construction employing columns with widely flaring heads having horizontal rings of reinforcement to support the floor or roof slab.
- mutual assured destruction — a U.S. doctrine of reciprocal deterrence resting on the U.S. and Soviet Union each being able to inflict unacceptable damage on the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.
- national merit scholarship — one of some 6000 college scholarships awarded annually since 1956, by the nonprofit, grant-supported National Merit Scholarship Corporation, to high-school students (National Merit Scholars) on the basis of scholastic record, personal character, and score on a test administered nationally.
- neither more nor less than — simply
- network information center — (NIC) A body that provides information, assistance and services to network users. These will typically include telephone and electronic mail "help desk" type services for users and network information services such as hostnames and addresses which are accessed automatically by computers using some client-server protocol (usually Sun's NIS). See also Network Operations Center.
- network information system — (spelling) A mis-expansion of NIS.
- new business profit margin — A new business profit margin is a system used by insurers to measure the cost of and profit from writing new policies.
- newfoundland standard time — one of the standard times used in Canada, three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- nickel-in-the-slot machine — a machine that operates if you put a nickel in its slot
- no more than/not more than — You use no more than or not more than when you want to emphasize how small a number or amount is.
- nondeterministic automaton — (theory) (Or "probabilistic automaton") An automaton in which there are several possible actions (outputs and next states) at each state of the computation such that the overall course of the computation is not completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. See also nondeterministic Turing Machine.
- not know someone from adam — to have no knowledge of or acquaintance with someone
- nuclear magnetic resonance — the selective absorption of electromagnetic radiation by an atomic nucleus in the presence of a strong, static, magnetic field: used in research and in medicine to monitor tissue metabolism and to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells. Abbreviation: NMR.
- official production system — (language) (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
- on demand: usu phr after v — If something is available or happens on demand, you can have it or it happens whenever you want it or ask for it.
- open document architecture — (standard) (ODA) ISO standard (8613) for describing documents. It allows text, graphics, and facsimile documents to be transferred between different systems.
- period-luminosity relation — the relationship between the period of light variation and of the absolute magnitude of Cepheid variable stars.
- plain old telephone system — Public Switched Telephone Network
- pokémon exception handling — (programming, humour) A humourous term for a try-catch exception handling construct with no constraint on which exceptions will be caught, for when you just "Gotta Catch 'Em All." (a slogan used in the Pokémon media empire). Pokémon is a trademark of the Pokémon Company of Japan.
- political action committee — A political action committee is an organization which campaigns for particular political policies, and that gives money to political parties or candidates who support those policies. The abbreviation PAC is also used.
- portable forth environment — (language) (PFE) A highly portable Forth development system based on the ANSI standard for Forth, by Dirk-Uwe Zoller of FHT, Mannheim, Germany. PFE aims to be correct, complete, usable, and simple but it isn't optimised for speed. It supports all dpANS word sets. It runs on Linux, RS/6000, and HP-UX. E-mail: Guido Draheim <[email protected]>.
- post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
- postprandial thermogenesis — the rate at which food is broken down after a meal and used by your body
- powerpc reference platform — PowerPC Platform
- professional office system — (messaging) (PROFS) An office messaging system from IBM, used worldwide, mainly on IBM mainframes.
- pulse-amplitude modulation — modulation of the amplitude of a train of electric pulses used to carry signals (pulse carrier) Abbreviation: PAM.
- put a bug in someone's ear — Also called true bug, hemipteran, hemipteron. a hemipterous insect.
- quite apart from something — used to indicate that you are aware of one aspect of a situation, but that you are going to focus on another aspect
- real-time operating system — (operating system) (RTOS) Any operating system where interrupts are guaranteed to be handled within a certain specified maximum time, thereby making it suitable for control of hardware in embedded systems and other time-critical applications. RTOS is not a specific product but a class of operating systems.
- recombinant dna technology — any of various techniques for separating and recombining segments of DNA or genes, often employing a restriction enzyme to cut a gene from a donor organism and inserting it into a plasmid or viral DNA for transplantation into a host organism, where the gene causes the production of a desired substance either for harvesting or for the benefit of the host organism itself.
- record management services — (operating system) (RMS) Procedures in the VMS operating system that programs call to process files and records within files. RMS allows programs to issue GET and PUT requests at the record level (record I/O) as well as read and write blocks (block I/O). VMS RMS is an integral part of the system software; its procedures run in executive mode.
- recreation room (or hall) — a room, as in a home (or a public hall), equipped for amusement and relaxation or for social activities
- remembrance of things past — a novel (1913–27) by Marcel Proust.
- renegotiable-rate mortgage — a type of home mortgage for which monthly payments stay constant for a term, usually of three to five years, and the interest rate is renegotiated at the end of every such term until the loan is paid off. Abbreviation: RRM.