16-letter words containing s, g, r, a, m
- misconfiguration — An incorrect or inappropriate configuration.
- missionary ridge — a ridge in NW Georgia and SE Tennessee: Civil War battle 1863.
- misunderstanding — failure to understand correctly; mistake as to meaning or intent.
- modern languages — languages currently spoken
- mortgagee clause — a clause attached to a fire-insurance policy for protecting a mortgagee against loss or damage.
- mothering sunday — Laetare Sunday.
- moving staircase — Also called moving staircase, moving stairway. a continuously moving stairway on an endless loop for carrying passengers up or down.
- munching squares — A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T - see HAKMEM items 146--148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the LISP Machine, have been christened "munching triangles" (try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), "munching w's", and "munching mazes". More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as "munching foos". [This is a good example of the use of the word foo as a metasyntactic variable.]
- nitrogen mustard — any of the class of poisonous, blistering compounds, as C 5 H 1 1 Cl 2 N, analogous in composition to mustard gas but containing nitrogen instead of sulfur: used in the treatment of cancer and similar diseases; mechlorethamine.
- operating system — (operating system) (OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running. The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship. Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around the machines on which it runs. Example operating systems include 386BSD, AIX, AOS, Amoeba, Angel, Artemis microkernel, BeOS, Brazil, COS, CP/M, CTSS, Chorus, DACNOS, DOSEXEC 2, GCOS, GEORGE 3, GEOS, ITS, KAOS, Linux, LynxOS, MPV, MS-DOS, MVS, Mach, Macintosh operating system, Microsoft Windows, MINIX, Multics, Multipop-68, Novell NetWare, OS-9, OS/2, Pick, Plan 9, QNX, RISC OS, STING, System V, System/360, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, TRUSIX, TWENEX, TYMCOM-X, Thoth, Unix, VM/CMS, VMS, VRTX, VSTa, VxWorks, WAITS.
- operating-system — the collection of software that directs a computer's operations, controlling and scheduling the execution of other programs, and managing storage, input/output, and communication resources. Abbreviation: OS.
- orange men's day — July 12, an annual celebration in Northern Ireland and certain cities having a large Irish section, especially Liverpool, to mark both the victory of William III over James II at the Battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690, and the Battle of Augbrim, July 12, 1690.
- overcompensating — Present participle of overcompensate.
- pension mortgage — an arrangement whereby a person takes out a mortgage and pays the capital repayment instalments into a pension fund and the interest to the mortgagee. The loan is repaid out of the tax-free lump sum proceeds of the pension plan on the borrower's retirement
- phantasmagorical — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
- pharmacogenetics — the branch of pharmacology that examines the relation of genetic factors to variations in response to drugs.
- pharmacogenomics — the study of human genetic variability in relation to drug action and its application to medical treatment
- programme seller — someone who sells written or printed lists of the events, performers, etc, in a theatre performance
- progress payment — an instalment of a larger payment made to a contractor for work carried out up to a specified stage of the job
- quasi-managerial — pertaining to management or a manager: managerial functions; the managerial class of society.
- recorded message — words spoken by someone and recorded electronically in order to be replayed again in future, esp automatically over the phone
- reverse mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
- roskind grammars — (tool) Yacc-based parsers for C and C++ by Jim Roskind. It does not use the %prec and %assoc YACC features so conflicts are never hidden. The C grammar has only one shift-reduce conflict, the C++ grammar has a few more. With byacc it can produce graphical parse trees automatically. The C grammar conforms to ANSI C and the C++ grammar supports cfront 2.0 constructs.
- saxifrage family — the plant family Saxifragaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and small trees having alternate or opposite leaves, clustered or solitary flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including the astilbe, currant, deutzia, gooseberry, hydrangea, mock orange, piggy-back plant, saxifrage, and strawberry geranium.
- saxo grammaticus — c1150–1206? Danish historian and poet.
- schaumburg-lippe — a former state in NW Germany.
- schmaltz herring — herring caught just before spawning, when it has much fat
- sea fish farming — the farming of saltwater fish
- security manager — The security manager of a store is the person responsible for organizing all security in the store and to whom security guards report.
- self-dramatizing — exaggerating one's own qualities, role, situation, etc., for dramatic effect or as an attention-getting device; presenting oneself dramatically.
- self-proclaiming — to announce or declare in an official or formal manner: to proclaim war.
- self-terminating — to bring to an end; put an end to: to terminate a contract.
- semiagricultural — partly engaged in or given over to agriculture
- sergeant at arms — an executive officer of a legislative or other body, whose duty it is to enforce its commands, preserve order, etc.
- shotgun marriage — a wedding occasioned or precipitated by pregnancy.
- simon boccanegra — an opera (1857) by Giuseppe Verdi.
- singing telegram — a greetings service in which a person is employed to present greetings by singing to the person celebrating
- size enlargement — Size enlargement is a process in which the particle size of a solid is increased.
- smelting furnace — an industrial oven used to heat ore in order to extract metal
- smooth breathing — a symbol (') used in the writing of Greek to indicate that the initial vowel over which it is placed is unaspirated.
- speaking trumpet — a trumpet-shaped instrument used to carry the voice a great distance or held to the ear by a deaf person to aid his hearing
- spectroheliogram — a photograph of the sun made with a spectroheliograph.
- sphygmomanometer — an instrument, often attached to an inflatable air-bladder cuff and used with a stethoscope, for measuring blood pressure in an artery.
- sphygmomanometry — an instrument, often attached to an inflatable air-bladder cuff and used with a stethoscope, for measuring blood pressure in an artery.
- spraying machine — a device for spraying large volumes of liquid, such as insecticide onto crops
- spring ephemeral — any of various woodland wildflowers that appear above ground in early spring, flower and fruit, and die in a short two-month period.
- spring mountains — a mountain range in S Nevada extending to the California border. Highest peak, Charleston Peak. 11,919 feet (3635 meters).
- stomach-churning — causing nausea.
- storage terminal — A storage terminal is a building or area with large tanks for storing oil, gas, and other petrochemical products.
- summary judgment — a judgment, as in an action for debt, that is entered without the necessity of jury trial, based on affidavits of the creditor and debtor that convince the court that there is no arguable issue.