17-letter words containing r, i, m
- electroretinogram — A record of the electrical activity of the retina, used in medical diagnosis and research.
- embroidery thread — a thread used for embroidery
- emergency landing — an occasion when a place is forced to land: for example, because of a mechanical fault, bad weather, terrorism, etc.
- emergency rations — food and drink that is designated for use in an emergency: for example, in a famine, after a plane crash, when hill-walkers or mountaineers are stranded, etc.
- emergency service — a department within a bigger organization that deals with emergencies
- emergency session — an urgent meeting held by parliament, ministers, etc. to discuss what measures should be taken to deal with an emergency
- emission spectrum — the continuous spectrum or pattern of bright lines or bands seen when the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a substance is passed into a spectrometer. The spectrum is characteristic of the emitting substance and the type of excitation to which it is subjected
- emissions trading — the buying and selling of allowances for pollutant emissions
- emotional cripple — someone who is unable to feel or show true emotion and so cannot form relationships with other people
- empirical formula — a chemical formula indicating the proportion of each element present in a molecule
- employer-provided — Employer-provided insurance is arranged or funded by the organization for which the policyholder works.
- enrolment figures — the numbers of people enrolling at an institution, on a course, etc
- entertainment tax — a tax imposed in some countries on forms of entertainment, such as films, shows, etc
- entry examination — the examination people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to take
- environmentalists — Plural form of environmentalist.
- examination board — an organization that sets and corrects exams
- examination paper — a paper with examination questions printed on it set to test the knowledge of examination candidates
- exfoliating cream — a granular cosmetic preparation that removes dead cells from the skin's surface
- experimental lisp — (language) (xlisp) An experimental programming language combining a subset of Common Lisp with an object-oriented extension capability (Class and Object types). It was implemented by David Micheal Betz at Apple to allow experimentation with object-oriented programming on small computers. The C source code has been ported to Unix, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari, and MS-DOS. Version 2.1 of the interpreter, by Tom Almy is closer to Common Lisp. E-mail: Tom Almy <[email protected]>.
- explosive forming — a rapid method of forming a metal object in which components are made by subjecting the metal to very high pressures generated by a controlled explosion
- external examiner — External experts, for example external examiners, come into an organization from outside in order to do a particular job fairly and impartially, or to check that a particular job was done properly.
- eyelet embroidery — a piece of embroidery decorated with such work
- fair market price — the price of something at which both a seller and a buyer are willing to strike a deal.
- fair market value — The fair market value of an asset is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for it on the open market.
- far be it from me — I would not presume; on no account
- farmers' alliance — an informal name for various regional political organizations that farmers established in the 1880s and that led to the formation of the Peoples' party in 1891–92.
- farming community — a community where farming is the main industry
- fermentation lock — a valve placed on the top of bottles of fermenting wine to allow bubbles to escape
- ferrimagnetically — In a ferrimagnetic manner.
- ferroelectric ram — Ferroelectric Random Access Memory
- fifth normal form — database normalisation
- financial manager — a person responsible for the supervision and handling of the financial affairs of an organization
- fire commissioner — the senior or officer at state or provincial level in charge of fire prevention and fire safety
- firehose syndrome — (networking, jargon) An absence, failure or inadequacy of flow control mechanisms causing the sender to overwhelm the receiver. The implication is that, like trying to drink from a firehose, the consequenses are worse than just loss of data, e.g. the receiver may crash. See ping-flood.
- first commandment — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: first of the Ten Commandments.
- first normal form — database normalisation
- first performance — the first time that a play or concert is performed
- first triumvirate — the political alliance of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey, formed in 60 bc
- fitness programme — a plan to help someone improve their health and physical condition
- flight instrument — any instrument used to indicate the altitude, attitude, airspeed, drift, or direction of an aircraft.
- forensic medicine — the application of medical knowledge to questions of civil and criminal law, especially in court proceedings.
- formative element — a morpheme that serves as an affix, not as a base, or root, in word formation.
- fourier transform — a mapping of a function, as a signal, that is defined in one domain, as space or time, into another domain, as wavelength or frequency, where the function is represented in terms of sines and cosines.
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- frederick william — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
- free-body diagram — A free-body diagram is a diagram of a structure in which all supports are replaced by forces.
- french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
- from side to side — movement: back and forth
- from time to time — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
- functional isomer — any of several structural isomers that have the same molecular formula but with the atoms connected in different ways and therefore falling into different functional groups.