20-letter words containing r, a, m
- material equivalence — equivalence (def 4b).
- material implication — equivalence (def 4a).
- material-equivalence — the state or fact of being equivalent; equality in value, force, significance, etc.
- maternal deprivation — the lack of a mother in a child's life, considered a cause of psychological problems later in life
- maternal health care — care for the health of a pregnant woman provided by a hospital or health centre
- measure one's length — to fall, lie, or be thrown down at full length
- media access control — (networking) (MAC) The lower sublayer of the OSI data link layer. The interface between a node's Logical Link Control and the network's physical layer. The MAC differs for various physical media. See also MAC Address, Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, token ring.
- medical practitioner — doctor
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- medieval warm period — the time, c900–1400, during which warmer temperatures existed in many parts of the world. Abbreviation: MWP.
- megabytes per second — (unit) (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
- megakaryocytopoiesis — (biology) The cellular development process that leads to platelet production.
- member of parliament — A Member of Parliament is a person who has been elected by the people in a particular area to represent them in a country's parliament. The abbreviation MP is often used.
- membranous labyrinth — an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. Synonyms: maze, network, web.
- memory address space — (architecture) 1. Any part of a processor's address space that is occupied by memory. 2. The range of addresses seen by a memory device relative to the base address at which it is mapped into the processor's address space.
- menstrual extraction — an abortion procedure involving suction aspiration of the uterine contents early in gestation, before the first missed menstrual period: sometimes performed later.
- meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
- methyl chloroformate — a colorless liquid, C 2 H 3 ClO 2 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
- mickey mouse program — (jargon) The North American equivalent of a "noddy program", i.e. trivial. The term doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
- microcrystalline wax — Microcrystalline wax is a wax used as a stiffening agent and as a coating agent for tablets and capsules.
- microminiaturization — extreme miniaturization, especially of electronic equipment, with extensive use of integrated circuits.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- middle-distance race — a race of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- military engineering — the design, construction, etc, of military fortifications and communications
- military superiority — the power, strength, or numbers of armed forces of a country viewed as an advantage over another country
- minimum lending rate — the official interest rate charged by the Bank of England and below which it will refrain from lending money.
- mischaracterizations — Plural form of mischaracterization.
- missionary apostolic — an honorary title conferred by the pope on certain missionaries.
- mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
- modify a reservation — If you modify a reservation, you change a detail of a booking because someone who has booked a room has asked you to.
- molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
- moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
- morning glory family — the plant family Convulvulaceae, characterized by twining herbaceous vines, shrubs, and trees having alternate, simple, or compound leaves, funnel-shaped, often showy flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including bindweed, dodder, moonflower, morning glory, and sweet potato.
- most general unifier — (logic) If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
- mother of the chapel — (in British trade unions in the publishing and printing industries) a woman shop steward
- mother-of-pearl moth — a pyralid moth, Pleuroptya ruralis, having a pale sheen, that is often seen around nettles, on which its green larvae feed
- motor neuron disease — Motor neuron disease is a disease which destroys the part of a person's nervous system that controls movement.
- mountain rescue team — a group of people who conduct search and rescue on a mountain, for example of someone who has fallen, got lost, etc
- mpeg-1 audio layer 1 — (audio, compression, algorithm) (MP1) A simple 32-subband audio compressor using a floating point representation for subband samples. Resolution and scale factor are stored for groups of 12 subsamples. MP1 is only used for Philips DCC Digital Compact cassette with data rates of 384 kbps.
- mpeg-1 audio layer 3 — (music, file format) (MP3) A digital audio compression algorithm that acheives a compression factor of about twelve while preserving sound quality. It does this by optimising the compression according to the range of sound that people can actually hear. MP3 is currently (July 1999) the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). MP3 is very different from Layer 2, using an additional MDCT layer to increase frequency resolution. Its scale factor groups are more optimised for the human ear, and it uses nonlinear sample quantisation and Huffman coding. MP3 files (filename extension ".mp3") can be downloaded from many websites and can be played using software available for most operating systems (also downloadable), e.g. Winamp for PC, MacAmp for Macintosh, and mpeg123 for Unix. MP3 files are usually downloaded completely before playing but streaming MP3 is also possible. A program called a "ripper" can be used to copy a selection from a music CD onto your hard disk and another program called an encoder can convert it to an MP3 file.
- mpeg-2 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format) An extention of MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for lower sampling rates (16-24 kHz) targeting bit rates from 32-64 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps). It is often combined with MPEG-2 LSF.
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- multipart stationery — continuous stationery comprising two or more sheets, either carbonless or with carbon paper between the sheets
- multiple inheritance — (programming) In object-oriented programming, the possibility that a class may have more than one direct superclass in the class hierarchy. The opposite is single inheritance.
- multiple personality — a rare disorder in which an individual displays several functionally dissociated personalities, each of a complexity comparable to that of a normal individual.
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- multistep hydroplane — a motorship having a flat bottom built as a series of planes inclined forward, the ship planing on each from stem to stern as its speed increases.