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18-letter words containing r, i, g, h, t, c

  • historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
  • hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
  • incidental charges — Incidental charges are costs of items and services that are not part of the main bill.
  • interchangeability — (of two things) capable of being put or used in the place of each other: interchangeable symbols.
  • kirkcudbrightshire — a historic county in SW Scotland.
  • lactogenic hormone — prolactin.
  • legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
  • lighting cameraman — the person who designs and supervises the lighting of scenes to be filmed
  • lithostratigraphic — Of or pertaining to lithostratigraphy.
  • logarithmic spiral — log r = aθ
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
  • marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
  • menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
  • metacentric height — the distance between the center of gravity and the metacenter of a floating body, as of a vessel.
  • microsoft exchange — (messaging)   Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.
  • moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
  • neighborhood watch — a neighborhood surveillance program or group in which residents keep watch over one another's houses, patrol the streets, etc., in an attempt to prevent crime.
  • neutrosophic logic — (logic)   (Or "Smarandache logic") A generalisation of fuzzy logic based on Neutrosophy. A proposition is t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, and f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F, or the sum n=t+i+f. Neutrosophic logic thus generalises: - intuitionistic logic, which supports incomplete theories (for 0100 and i=0, with both t,f<100); - dialetheism, which says that some contradictions are true (for t=f=100 and i=0; some paradoxes can be denoted this way). Compared with all other logics, neutrosophic logic introduces a percentage of "indeterminacy" - due to unexpected parameters hidden in some propositions. It also allows each component t,i,f to "boil over" 100 or "freeze" under 0. For example, in some tautologies t>100, called "overtrue".
  • nightmare scenario — If you describe a situation or event as a nightmare scenario, you mean that it is the worst possible thing that could happen.
  • noninterchangeable — That cannot be interchanged with another.
  • north college hill — a city in SW Ohio.
  • optical brightener — an additive that dyes and brightens fabric or paper
  • organization chart — a diagrammatic representation showing how departments or divisions in an organization, as a large corporation, are related to one another along lines of authority.
  • orthopedic surgery — corrective operation on bones or joints
  • orthotungstic acid — an oxyacid acid of tungsten. Formula: H2WO4
  • parachute regiment — an airborne regiment of an army
  • phantasmagorically — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
  • positively charged — having a positive charge
  • red-light district — an area or district in a city in which many houses of prostitution are located.
  • registered charity — official aid organization
  • resistance fighter — someone who fights (for freedom, etc) against an invader in an occupied country, or against their government, etc, often secretly or illegally
  • rhyming dictionary — a specialist dictionary organized by the final sounds of words, used to write poetry
  • school of motoring — a centre where people pay for lessons to learn to drive
  • shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
  • shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
  • shugart associates — (company)   The disk drive company, founded by Alan F. Shugart, which developed SCSI. Alan left Shugart Associates in 1974 [did he quit or was he fired?]. Shugart Associates was bought, and eventually shut down by Xerox.
  • sixth-form college — (in England and Wales) a college offering A-level and other courses to pupils over sixteen from local schools, esp from those that do not have sixth forms
  • sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
  • spectroheliography — the process of obtaining an image of the sun in light of a particular wavelength, such as calcium or hydrogen, showing the distribution of the element over the surface and in the solar atmosphere, using a spectroheliograph
  • speech recognition — Computers. the computerized analysis of spoken words in order to identify the speaker, as in security systems, or to respond to voiced commands: the analysis is performed by finding patterns in the spectrum of the incoming sound and comparing them with stored patterns of elements of sound, as phones, or of complete words.
  • spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
  • spherical triangle — a triangle formed by arcs of great circles of a sphere.
  • strathclyde region — a former local government region in W Scotland: formed in 1975 from Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, Buteshire, Dunbartonshire, and parts of Argyllshire, Ayrshire, and Stirlingshire; replaced in 1996 by the council areas of Glasgow, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Argyll and Bute, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and East Ayrshire
  • stratigraphic trap — A stratigraphic trap is a rock formation that contains hydrocarbons and is sealed by other rock formations.
  • sympathetic string — a thin wire string, as in various obsolete musical instruments, designed to vibrate sympathetically with the bowed or plucked strings to reinforce the sound.
  • synthetic geometry — elementary geometry, as distinct from analytic geometry.
  • technical sergeant — a noncommissioned officer ranking below a master sergeant and above a staff sergeant.
  • the electronic age — the electronic age began when electronic equipment, including computers came into use
  • the general public — the people in a society; people in general
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