17-letter words containing p, r, i, m
- intradepartmental — Within a department.
- invisible imports — imports of services rather than goods
- isomorphism class — (mathematics) A collection of all the objects isomorphic to a given object. Talking about the isomorphism class (of a poset, say) ensures that we will only consider its properties as a poset, and will not consider other incidental properties it happens to have.
- judgment of paris — the decision by Paris to award Aphrodite the golden apple of discord competed for by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera.
- jus primae noctis — droit du seigneur.
- lambda expression — (mathematics) A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
- larmor precession — the precession of charged particles, as electrons, placed in a magnetic field, the frequency of the precession (Larmor frequency) being equal to the electronic charge times the strength of the magnetic field divided by 4π times the mass.
- lempert operation — fenestration (def 3c).
- let something rip — If you let something rip, you do it as quickly or as forcefully as possible. You can say 'let it rip' or 'let her rip' to someone when you want them to make a vehicle go as fast as it possibly can.
- life imprisonment — long-term prison sentence
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- loco primo citato — loc. primo cit.
- logic programming — (artificial intelligence, programming, language) A declarative, relational style of programming based on first-order logic. The original logic programming language was Prolog. The concept is based on Horn clauses. The programmer writes a "database" of "facts", e.g. wet(water). ("water is wet") and "rules", e.g. mortal(X) :- human(X). ("X is mortal is implied by X is human"). Facts and rules are collectively known as "clauses". The user supplies a "goal" which the system attempts to prove using "resolution" or "backward chaining". This involves matching the current goal against each fact or the left hand side of each rule using "unification". If the goal matches a fact, the goal succeeds; if it matches a rule then the process recurses, taking each sub-goal on the right hand side of the rule as the current goal. If all sub-goals succeed then the rule succeeds. Each time a possible clause is chosen, a "choice point" is created on a stack. If subsequent resolution fails then control eventually returns to the choice point and subsequent clauses are tried. This is known as "backtracking". Clauses may contain logic variables which take on any value necessary to make the fact or the left hand side of the rule match a goal. Unification binds these variables to the corresponding subterms of the goal. Such bindings are associated with the choice point at which the clause was chosen and are undone when backtracking reaches that choice point. The user is informed of the success or failure of his first goal and if it succeeds and contains variables he is told what values of those variables caused it to succeed. He can then ask for alternative solutions.
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- lymphangiographic — Relating to lymphangiography.
- m-expression lisp — (MLISP) The original "meta-language" syntax of Lisp, designed by John McCarthy in 1962. MLISP was intended for external use in place of the parenthesised S-expression syntax.
- maintainer script — (Debian) One of the scripts (preinst, prerm, postinst, postrm) that may be included in a Debian binary package. These scripts may create and/or remove symlinks, files or directories that, for some reason, could not be done directly by dpkg. Maintainer scripts frequently create or update the symlinks in the /etc/rc?.d directories and start, stop, or restart daemons.
- malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
- malay archipelago — an extensive island group in the Indian and Pacific oceans, SE of Asia, including the Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands, the Moluccas, and the Philippines.
- manpower planning — a procedure used in organizations to balance future requirements for all levels of employee with the availability of such employees
- manual typewriter — a keyboard machine, operated entirely by hand, for writing mechanically in characters resembling print
- mariner's compass — a compass used for navigational purposes, consisting of a pivoted compass card in a gimbal-mounted, nonferrous metal bowl.
- massage therapist — sb who gives body rubs
- matter of opinion — a point open to question; a debatable statement
- maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
- mean proportional — (between two numbers a and b) a number x for which a/x = x/b : The number 3 is a mean proportional between 1 and 9.
- mean-spiritedness — the quality of being mean-spirited
- medical procedure — A medical procedure is a medical treatment or operation.
- meissen porcelain — Dresden china.
- memory protection — (memory management) A system to prevent one process corrupting the memory (or other resources) of any other, including the operating system. Memory protection usually relies on a combination of hardware (a memory management unit) and software to allocate memory to processes and handle exceptions. The effectiveness of memory protection varies from one operating system to another. In most versions of Unix it is almost impossible to corrupt another process' memory, except in some archaic implementations and Lunix (not Linux!). Under Microsoft Windows (version? hardware?) any 16 bit application(?) can circumvent the memory protection, often leading to one or more GPFs. Currently (April 1996) neither Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, nor Mac OS offer memory protection. Windows NT has it, and Mac OS System 8 will offer a form of memory protection.
- mental impairment — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind, which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct
- mentally impaired — with reduced or weakened mental capacity
- merchant shipping — shipping which is involved in commerce (rather than defence, etc)
- mercuric sulphide — a compound of mercury, usually existing as a black solid (metacinnabarite) or a red solid (cinnabar or vermilion), which is used as a pigment. Formula: HgS
- mercury poisoning — illness caused by exposure to mercury
- metalloproteinase — (enzyme) Any of several proteinases that have a metal atom (often zinc) at their active centre.
- metaperiodic acid — the crystalline compound HIO4, an oxyacid of iodine
- methylidyne group — the trivalent group ≡CH.
- microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
- microfilm plotter — a type of incremental plotter that has a film rather than a paper output
- micromanipulation — the technique of performing mechanical operations under high magnification through the use of specialized tools.
- micromanipulators — Plural form of micromanipulator.
- micropaleontology — the branch of paleontology dealing with the study of microscopic fossils.
- microphanerophyte — any shrub or tree having a height of 2 to 8 metres
- microphotographic — Relating to microphotography.
- microreproduction — a photographic image too small to be read by the unaided eye.
- microsoft project — (product) A Microsoft Windows program offering various project management tools.
- middle-age spread — an increase in bulk, especially in the waist and buttocks, associated with the onset of middle age and the body's decreasing ability to metabolize calories efficiently.
- midmorning prayer — the third of the seven canonical hours; terce