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20-letter words containing r, e, m, i, n

  • multi-user dimension — (games)   (MUD) (Or Multi-User Domain, originally "Multi-User Dungeon") A class of multi-player interactive game, accessible via the Internet or a modem. A MUD is like a real-time chat forum with structure; it has multiple "locations" like an adventure game and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic and a simple economic system. A MUD where characters can build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world is sometimes known as a "MUSH". Most MUDs allow you to log in as a guest to look around before you create your own character. Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU- form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the University of Essex's DEC-10 in 1979. It was a game similar to the classic Colossal Cave adventure, except that it allowed multiple people to play at the same time and interact with each other. Descendants of that game still exist today and are sometimes generically called BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth that the name MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto: "You haven't *lived* 'til you've *died* on MUD!"); however, this is false - Richard Bartle explicitly placed "MUD" in the PD in 1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the myth. Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. Because these had an image as "research" they often survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together with the fact that Usenet feeds have been spotty and difficult to get in the UK, made the MUDs major foci of hackish social interaction there. AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and quickly gained popularity in the US; they became nuclei for large hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to emphasise social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition. In 1991, over 50% of MUD sites are of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesises the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of TinyMud. The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue. The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. There is now a move afoot to deprecate the term MUD itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. See also bonk/oif, FOD, link-dead, mudhead, MOO, MUCK, MUG, MUSE, chat.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • mum-and-dad investor — a small-scale non-professional investor
  • navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
  • neapolitan ice cream — variously flavored and colored ice cream and ice mixtures frozen in layers.
  • nemine contradicente — no one contradicting; unanimously.
  • net domestic product — the gross domestic product minus an allowance for the depreciation of capital goods
  • new democratic party — the Canadian social democratic party formed in 1961
  • nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
  • nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
  • north american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas fault and Aleutian Trench.
  • not mince your words — If you say that someone does not mince their words, you mean that they speak in a forceful and direct way, especially when saying something unpleasant to someone.
  • notre dame mountains — a mountain range in E Quebec, Canada, an extension of the Green Mountains in Vermont and a portion of the Appalachian Mountains: about 500 miles (800 km) long, rising about 2000 feet (610 meters).
  • object role modeling — (programming)   (ORM) A conceptual modelling approach that pictures the application world as a set of objects that play roles (parts in relationships, which may be unary, binary or higher order). ORM provides both graphical and textual languages that enable models to be expressed naturally. For data modelling purposes, its graphical language is more expressive than ER or UML.
  • omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
  • one's spiritual home — Your spiritual home is the place where you feel that you belong, usually because your ideas or attitudes are the same as those of the people who live there.
  • ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.
  • optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
  • pan-american highway — a road system proposed in the 1920s linking nations of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Alaska to Santiago, Chile, with some gaps remaining in Panama and Colombia. The section between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Panama City is known as the Inter-American Highway Total length about 16,000 miles (25,744 km).
  • parametric equations — one of two or more equations expressing the location of a point on a curve or surface by determining each coordinate separately.
  • parkinson's syndrome — a complex of symptoms indistinguishable from Parkinson's disease, commonly affecting boxers or sometimes occurring as a result of substance abuse or an encephalitic infection.
  • particle beam weapon — a weapon that fires particle beams into the atmosphere or space
  • pass in one's marble — to die
  • pentobarbital sodium — a barbiturate drug used in medicine as a sedative and hypnotic. Formula: C11H17N2O3Na
  • peremptory exception — a plea in bar of an action.
  • periodontal membrane — the collagenous, fibrous connective tissue between the cementum of the tooth and the alveolus.
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • peruvian mastic tree — a pepper tree, Schinus molle.
  • pessimising compiler — /pes'*-mi:z"ing k*m-pi:l"r/ (Antonym of "optimising compiler") A compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimise the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.
  • pick someone's brain — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • pickwickian syndrome — an abnormality characterized by extreme obesity accompanied by sleepiness, hypoventilation, and polycythemia.
  • pico della mirandola — Count Giovanni [jaw-vahn-nee] /dʒɔˈvɑn ni/ (Show IPA), 1463–94, Italian humanist and writer.
  • polaroid land camera — any of several types of camera yielding a finished print by means of a special developing and processing technique that occurs inside the camera and takes only a few seconds to complete
  • poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
  • population parameter — a quantity or statistical measure that, for a given population, is fixed and that is used as the value of a variable in some general distribution or frequency function to make it descriptive of that population: The mean and variance of a population are population parameters.
  • portfolio employment — the practice of working for several employers simultaneously rather than working full-time for a single employer
  • power of appointment — the authority granted by a donor to a donee to select the person or persons who are to enjoy property rights or income upon the death of the donor or of the donee or after the termination of existing rights or interests.
  • precision instrument — finely-tuned device
  • predicate nominative — (in Latin, Greek, and certain other languages) a predicate noun or adjective in the nominative case.
  • premenstrual tension — Premenstrual tension is the same as premenstrual syndrome. The abbreviation PMT is often used.
  • prenuptial agreement — A prenuptial agreement is a written contract made between a man and a woman before they marry, in which they state how their assets such as property and money should be divided if they get divorced.
  • presentation manager — The elephantine graphical user interface to the OS/2 operating system.
  • presidential primary — a direct primary for the selection of state delegates to a national party convention and the expression of preference for a U.S. presidential nominee.
  • price discrimination — the practice of offering identical goods to different buyers at different prices, when the goods cost the same.
  • pride of the morning — light mist or precipitation observed at sea in the morning and regarded as indicating a fine day.
  • prima facie evidence — evidence sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of fact unless rebutted.
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