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21-letter words containing r, e, s, i

  • medium access control — Media Access Control
  • mengistu haile mariam — born 1937, Ethiopian political leader: head of state 1977–87; president 1987–91.
  • meter-kilogram-second — of or relating to the system of units in which the meter, kilogram, and second are the principal units of length, mass, and time. Abbreviation: mks, MKS.
  • metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
  • minister of the crown — any Government minister of cabinet rank
  • mistress of the robes — (in Britain) a lady of high rank in charge of the Queen's wardrobe
  • modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
  • motherwell and wishaw — a burgh in the Motherwell district, in S Scotland.
  • motivational research — the application of the knowledge and techniques of the social sciences, especially psychology and sociology, to understanding consumer attitudes and behavior: used as a guide in advertising and marketing.
  • motor neurone disease — Motor neurone disease is a disease which destroys the part of a person's nervous system that controls movement.
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • multichannel analyser — an electronic instrument, such as a pulse height analyser, that splits an input waveform into a large number of channels in accordance with a particular parameter of the input
  • multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
  • national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
  • naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
  • necrotising fasciitis — a disease caused by the bacterium streptococcus pyogenes, in which the fasciae of the muscles or other organs become inflamed, resulting in rapid destruction of overlying tissues
  • needs no introduction — If you say that someone or something needs no introduction, you mean that they are so well known that everyone knows who or what they are.
  • negative prescription — the barring of adverse claims to property, etc, after a specified period of time has elapsed, allowing the possessor to acquire title
  • negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
  • negotiable securities — securities that are legally transferable in title from one party to another
  • neither fish nor fowl — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
  • nellis air force base — the largest air base in the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command, located near Las Vegas, Nev., and developed from what began in 1941 as a U.S. Army Air Corps field.
  • network administrator — (job)   A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.
  • network filing system — (spelling)   Misnomer for Network File System.
  • new year's resolution — If you make a New Year's resolution, you make a decision at the beginning of a year to start doing something or to stop doing something.
  • night storage heating — a system of heating which uses a heater or radiator that stores heat at night-time because electricity is cheaper
  • night-blooming cereus — any of various cacti of the genera Hylocereus, Peniocereus, Nyctocereus, or Selenicereus, having large, usually white flowers that open at night.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • no smoke without fire — the evidence strongly suggests something has indeed happened
  • nominative of address — a noun naming the person to whom one is speaking.
  • nonexamination course — a course of study in which there are no examinations
  • nonrestrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • nonviolent resistance — passive resistance, peaceful protest
  • north east new guinea — the NE part of the former Australian Territory of New Guinea; now part of Papua New Guinea.
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • northwest territories — the region north of the Ohio River, organized by Congress in 1787, comprising present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota.
  • nuclear cross section — cross section (def 7).
  • nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
  • observation satellite — an unmanned satellite that observes the earth and gathers data
  • oil-in-water emulsion — An oil-in-water emulsion is a mixture in which an oily medicine is dispersed in water or other liquid.
  • old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
  • on o's best behaviour — If someone is on their best behaviour, they are trying very hard to behave well.
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • one-point perspective — a mathematical system for representing three-dimensional objects and space on a two-dimensional surface by means of intersecting lines that are drawn vertically and horizontally and that radiate from one point (one-point perspective) two points (two-point perspective) or several points on a horizon line as perceived by a viewer imagined in an arbitrarily fixed position.
  • open graphics library — (graphics, library)   (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • opposite-sex marriage — (broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage: Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times. See Word Story at the current entry.
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • overuse strain injury — (medical)   (Or "repetitive strain injury", RSI, "repetitive strain disorder") Any tendon or muscle injury resulting from overuse, usually in the hand, wrist, or arm. Injury may be caused by any combination of repetitive, unacustomed, or prolonged movements, forcefulness, or an awkward position (often due to bad ergonomics). The symptoms are pain, tingling, weakness, numbness, swelling, cracking, stiffness, or reduced coordination. Common conditions are: Carpal tunnel syndrome, where swelling of the membrane linings in your wrist surrounding the tendons that bend your fingers compresses the median nerve. This may result in numbness and pain in the hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. Tennis elbow, where rotating your wrist and using force causes a form of epicondylitis. Tendinitis, where unacustomed exercise or repeated awkward movements inflame wrist, elbow, or shoulder tendons, often leading to severe stiffness. Trigger finger, a popping or catching sensation when you bend your finger, wrist, or shoulder. This form of tenosynovitis is caused by repetitive hand movements. To prevent the condition worsening, treat the pain with heat, cold, or aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium; rest; or immobilise the injured area with a splint or bandage. See a doctor.
  • pacific standard time — See under standard time.
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