18-letter words containing s, o, t, y
- locally finite set — a collection of sets in a topological space in which each point of the space has a neighborhood that intersects a finite number of sets of the collection.
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
- loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
- lowell observatory — the astronomical observatory, situated in Flagstaff, Arizona, at which Pluto was discovered in 1930.
- luminous intensity — the luminous flux in lumens emitted per unit solid angle by a light source, measured in candles.
- 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".
- magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
- magnetogasdynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- maternity hospital — birthing facility
- metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
- methylprednisolone — A synthetic glucocorticoid drug, with chemical formula C22H30O5.
- methyltestosterone — a synthetic androgenic steroid drug, C 2 0 H 3 0 O 2 , used for its anabolic properties in males in the treatment of hypogonadism and other androgen-deficiency disease states, and in females in the treatment of breast cancer.
- microcrystallinity — The condition of being microcrystalline.
- minority president — (in the US) a president who has been elected by the largest number of votes cast but not by a majority of the electorate
- mobile data system — a system consisting of a client computer requesting information and a server supplying this information
- money is no object — If you say that money is no object or distance is no object, you are emphasizing that you are willing or able to spend as much money as necessary or travel whatever distance is required.
- money of necessity — temporary coinage, as siege pieces, issued in areas where regular coinage is unavailable: sometimes of unusual materials, as leather or wood.
- monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
- moog (synthesizer) — an early musical synthesizer
- muscular dystrophy — a hereditary disease characterized by gradual wasting of the muscles with replacement by scar tissue and fat, sometimes also affecting the heart.
- music to your ears — If something that you hear is music to your ears, it makes you feel very happy.
- mutual aid society — A mutual aid society is an organization that provides benefits or other help to its members when they are affected by things such as death, sickness, disability, old age, or unemployment.
- natural philosophy — natural science.
- nebular hypothesis — the theory that the solar system evolved from a mass of nebular matter: prominent in the 19th century following its precise formulation by Laplace.
- neo-pythagoreanism — a philosophical system, established in Alexandria and Rome in the second century b.c., consisting mainly of revived Pythagorean doctrines with elements of Platonism and Stoicism.
- neutrino astronomy — the branch of astronomy dealing with the detection and measurement of neutrinos emitted by the sun and other celestial objects.
- new storage system — (storage) (NSS) A major Multics implementation project during the 1970s. The initial Multics file system design had evolved from the one-huge-disk world of CTSS. When multiple disk units were used they were just assigned increasing ranges of disk addresses, so a segment could have pages scattered over all disks on the system. This provided good I/O parallelism but made crash recovery expensive. NSS redesigned the lower levels of the file system, introducing the concepts of logical volume and physical volume and a mapping from a Multics directory branch to a VTOC entry for each file. The new system had much better recovery performance in exchange for a small space and performance cost.
- non-responsibility — the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management.
- normally aspirated — A normally aspirated or naturally aspirated engine breathes air at atmospheric pressure.
- northeast by north — a point on the compass 11°15′ north of northeast. Abbreviation: NEbN.
- northwest by north — a point on the compass, 11°15′ north of northwest. Abbreviation: NWbN.
- not a pretty sight — If you say that someone or something is not a pretty sight, you mean that it is not pleasant to look at.
- not by a long shot — absolutely not
- offset lithography — offset (def 6).
- old curiosity shop — a novel (1840–41) by Dickens.
- on a sticky wicket — in an awkward situation
- open heart surgery — surgery performed on the exposed heart while a heart-lung machine pumps and oxygenates the blood and diverts it from the heart.
- open-heart surgery — surgery performed on the exposed heart while a heart-lung machine pumps and oxygenates the blood and diverts it from the heart.
- organic solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on division of labor and interdependence and is characteristic of complex, industrial societies.
- oriental cat's-eye — a chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl, used as a gem.
- orthopedic surgery — corrective operation on bones or joints
- ovariohysterectomy — Surgical removal of the ovaries and uterus.
- owen stanley range — a mountain range in SE New Guinea. Highest peak: Mount Victoria, 4073 m (13 363 ft)
- parathyroid glands — any of several small oval glands usually lying near or embedded in the thyroid gland.
- pay one's respects — a particular, detail, or point (usually preceded by in): to differ in some respect.
- payload specialist — an astronaut trained to handle highly complex or classified equipment carried aboard a space shuttle and to conduct experiments in space.
- pellitory of spain — a small Mediterranean plant, Anacyclus pyrethrum, the root of which contains an oil formerly used to relieve toothache: family Asteraceae (composites)
- peter tschaikowsky — Peter Ilyich [il-yich] /ˈɪl yɪtʃ/ (Show IPA), Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich.
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.