17-letter words containing p, r
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
- literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
- lithostratigraphy — the study or character of stratified rocks based solely on their physical and petrographic features.
- loco primo citato — loc. primo cit.
- loco supra citato — l.s.c.
- 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.
- logical operation — Boolean operation.
- lower paleolithic — See under Paleolithic.
- 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.
- manhattan project — U.S. History. the unofficial designation for the U.S. War Department's secret program, organized in 1942, to explore the isolation of radioactive isotopes and the production of an atomic bomb: initial research was conducted at Columbia University in Manhattan.
- 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.
- mascarpone cheese — a very rich, white cream cheese of Italy
- mass spectrograph — a mass spectroscope for recording a mass spectrum on a photographic plate.
- mass spectrometer — a device for identifying the kinds of particles present in a given substance: the particles are ionized and beamed through an electromagnetic field and the manner in which they are deflected is indicative of their mass and, thus, their identity.
- mass spectroscope — an instrument used to determine the masses of small, electrically charged particles.
- mass spectroscopy — an instrument used to determine the masses of small, electrically charged particles.
- 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.
- mayflower compact — an agreement to establish a government, entered into by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620.
- 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.