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22-letter words containing s, m, a, l, t

  • disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
  • dyadic systems limited — Dyalog Limited
  • employers' association — a body of employers, usually from the same sector of the economy, associated to further the interests of member companies by conducting negotiations with trade unions, providing advice, making representations to other bodies, etc
  • end transmission block — (character)   (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
  • equal rights amendment — a proposed amendment to the US Constitution enshrining equality between the sexes
  • estimated maximum loss — Estimated maximum loss is the amount of risk that an underwriter estimates the insurer will be able to cover before ceding any surplus to a reinsurer.
  • examining the entrails — The process of grovelling through a core dump or hex image in an attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare runes, incantation, black art, desk check.
  • facsimile transmission — an international system of transmitting a written, printed, or pictorial document over the telephone system by scanning it photoelectrically and reproducing the image after transmission
  • fall prey to something — To fall prey to something bad means to be taken over or affected by it.
  • fallacy of composition — the fallacy of inferring that a property of parts or members of a whole is also a property of the whole (opposed to fallacy of division).
  • federal reserve system — a U.S. federal banking system that is under the control of a central board of governors (Federal Reserve Board) with a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) in each of 12 districts and that has wide powers in controlling credit and the flow of money as well as in performing other functions, as regulating and supervising its member banks.
  • fetal alcohol syndrome — a pattern of birth defects caused by maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy: considered as one of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Abbreviation: FAS.
  • give something a whirl — to attempt or give a trial to something
  • go for all the marbles — to take a great risk in the hope of a great gain
  • graeco-roman wrestling — a style of wrestling in which the legs may not be used to obtain a fall and no hold may be applied below the waist
  • gran turismo omologato — (of an automobile) certified as conforming to the specifications, as fuel capacity and engine displacement, for a class of standard automobiles (Gran Turismo) qualified to engage in various types of competitions. Abbreviation: GTO.
  • hammersmith and fulham — a borough of Greater London on the River Thames: established in 1965 by the amalgamation of Fulham and Hammersmith. Pop: 174 200 (2003 est). Area: 16 sq km (6 sq miles)
  • historical materialism — (in Marxist theory) the doctrine that all forms of social thought, as art or philosophy, and institutions, as the family or the state, develop as a superstructure founded on an economic base; that they reflect the character of economic relations and are altered or modified as a result of class struggles; that each ruling economic class produces the class that will destroy or replace it; and that dialectical necessity requires the eventual withering away of the state and the establishment of a classless society: the body of theory, in dialectical materialism, dealing with historical process and social causation.
  • horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
  • hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
  • hypothetical syllogism — a hypothetical syllogism has two uses. In propositional logic it expresses one of the rules of inference, while in the history of logic, it is a short-hand for the theory of consequence
  • in your wildest dreams — If you say that you could not imagine a particular thing in your wildest dreams, you are emphasizing that you think it is extremely strange or unlikely.
  • infinitesimal calculus — the differential calculus and the integral calculus, considered together.
  • intentionally homeless — without anywhere to leave because one has left accommodation voluntarily
  • islamic fundamentalism — the belief or advocating of a conservative adherence to literal or traditional interpretations of the Qu'ran and the Sunnah
  • knowledge-based system — (artificial intelligence)   (KBS) A program for extending and/or querying a knowledge base. The related term expert system is normally used to refer to a highly domain-specific type of KBS used for a specialised purpose such as medical diagnosis. The Cyc project is an example of a large KBS.
  • last call optimisation — (programming)   (Or "tail call optimisation") Discarding the immediate calling context (call stack frame) when the last action of a function or procedure, A, is to call another function or procedure, B. B will then return directly to A's caller, or possibly further up the call stack if the optimisation has been applied to several consecutive calls. Last call optimisation allows arbitrarily deep nesting of procedure calls without consuming memory to store useless environments. This is particularly useful in the special case of tail recursion optimisation, where a procedure's last action is to call itself (possibly indirectly).
  • league of women voters — a nonpartisan organization that works toward improving the political process: created in 1920 to inform women on public issues. Abbreviation: LWV.
  • limited access highway — expressway
  • lorentz transformation — the mathematical transformation in the special theory of relativity that describes the way in which measurements of space, time, and other physical quantities differ for two observers in uniform relative motion.
  • lynx real-time systems — A company in Los Gatos, California who distribute LynxOS. E-mail: <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>. Address: 16780 Lark Avenue, Los Gatos, CA 95030, USA. Telephone:: +1 (408) 354 7770, +1 (800) 255 LYNX. Fax: +1 (408) 354 7085.
  • magnetic pole strength — Electricity. a measure of the force exerted by one face of a magnet on a face of another magnet when both magnets are represented by equal and opposite poles. Symbol: m.
  • make a beeline for sth — If you make a beeline for a place, you go to it as quickly and directly as possible.
  • make a clean breast of — Anatomy, Zoology. (in bipeds) the outer, front part of the thorax, or the front part of the body from the neck to the abdomen; chest.
  • management consultancy — a company of professionals who are employed to help an organization improve efficiency and performance
  • manuel estrada cabrera — Manuel [mah-nwel] /mɑˈnwɛl/ (Show IPA), 1857–1924, Guatemalan politician: president 1898–1920.
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • middle atlantic states — the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey
  • middle-distance runner — someone who runs races of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
  • molecular distillation — a vacuum distillation in which the molecules of the distillate reach the condenser before colliding with one another.
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • mutton dressed as lamb — If you describe a woman as mutton dressed as lamb, you are criticizing her for trying to look younger than she really is, in a way that you consider unattractive.
  • national semiconductor — (company)   A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
  • native language system — (NLS) A set of interfaces specified by X/Open for developing applications to run in different natural language environments.
  • newton's law of motion — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
  • nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
  • nominal semidestructor — (abuse)   Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
  • non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
  • nonrepresentationalism — not resembling or portraying any object in physical nature: a nonrepresentational painting.
  • on someone's coattails — the back of the skirt on a man's coat or jacket.
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