17-letter words containing s, y, m
- muscle dysmorphia — a mental disorder primarily affecting males, characterized by obsessions about a perceived lack of muscularity, leading to compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, etc. Compare body dysmorphic disorder.
- myasthenia gravis — a disease of impaired transmission of motor nerve impulses, characterized by episodic muscle weakness and easy fatigability, especially of the face, tongue, neck, and respiratory muscles: caused by autoimmune destruction of acetylcholine receptors. Abbreviation: MG.
- mystical theology — the branch of theology dealing with mysticism and mystical experiences.
- national assembly — the body constituted by the French Third Estate in June 1789 after the calling of the Estates General. It was dissolved in Sept 1791 to be replaced by the new Legislative Assembly
- navigation system — A navigation system is an instrument that determines the position of a vehicle and the route to a particular place.
- nial systems ltd. — Distributors of Q'NIAL. Address: Ottawa Canada. Telephone: Canada (613) 234 4188.
- nightshade family — the plant family Solanaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, trees, shrubs, and vines having alternate, simple or pinnate leaves, conspicuous flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including belladonna, eggplant, nightshade, peppers of the genus Capsicum, petunia, potato, tobacco, and tomato.
- nondiscriminatory — characterized by or showing prejudicial treatment, especially as an indication of bias related to age, color, national origin, religion, sex, etc.: discriminatory practices in housing; a discriminatory tax.
- nuclear chemistry — the branch of chemistry concerned with nuclear reactions
- olympic mountains — a mountain range in NW Washington: part of the Coast Range. Highest peak: Mount Olympus, 2427 m (7965 ft)
- olympic peninsula — a large peninsula of W Washington
- optical astronomy — the branch of observational astronomy using telescopes to observe or photograph celestial objects in visible light.
- organic chemistry — the branch of chemistry, originally limited to substances found only in living organisms, dealing with the compounds of carbon.
- out of harm's way — If someone or something is out of harm's way, they are in a safe place away from danger or from the possibility of being damaged.
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- parcplace systems — (company) A company spun-off from Xerox PARC that developed the original version of VisualWorks.
- parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
- passamaquoddy bay — an inlet of the Bay of Fundy, between Maine and New Brunswick, at the mouth of the St. Croix River.
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- pay someone's way — to pay someone's share of the expenses
- paymaster general — a government minister responsible for making payments by government departments
- persistent memory — non-volatile storage
- physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
- physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- primary processes — the generally unorganized mental activity characteristic of the unconscious and occurring in dreams, fantasies, and related processes.
- primary qualities — any of the qualities inherent in an object, namely quantity, extent, figure, solidity, and motion or rest.
- primary structure — Biochemistry. the basic sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide or protein.
- production system — (programming) A production system consists of a collection of productions (rules), a working memory of facts and an algorithm, known as forward chaining, for producing new facts from old. A rule becomes eligible to "fire" when its conditions match some set of elements currently in working memory. A conflict resolution strategy determines which of several eligible rules (the conflict set) fires next. A condition is a list of symbols which represent constants, which must be matched exactly; variables which bind to the thing they match and "<> symbol" which matches a field not equal to symbol. Example production systems are OPS5, CLIPS, flex.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- property mistress — a female member of the stage crew in charge of the stage properties
- protective system — protectionism (def 1).
- psychometric test — a test designed to test a person's mental state, personality and thought processes
- purely and simply — You use purely and simply to emphasize that the thing you are mentioning is the only thing involved.
- quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- reiter's syndrome — a disease of unknown cause, occurring primarily in adult males, marked by urethritis, conjunctivitis, and arthritis.
- rich site summary — (web, standard) (RSS, blog, feed) A family of standard web document types containing regularly updated, short articles or news items. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds", "news feeds" or just "feeds") can be read with an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or Feedly. These are sometimes called "aggregators" because they combine multiple RSS feeds which the user can browse as a single list. The RSS reader tracks which articles the use has read, and is typically set to show only new articles, hence the idea of a "feed" or flow of new items. Most RSS feeds are based on RDF. RDF is a structured document format for describing textual resources such as news articles available on the web. RSS originally stood for "RDF Site Summary" as it was designed to provide short descriptions of (changes to) a website. Because it provides a standard way to deliver, or "syndicate", news or updates from one site to another, RSS is sometimes expanded as "Really Simple Syndication". It is closely associated with blogs, most of which provide an RSS feed of articles.
- ross and cromarty — a historic county in NW Scotland.
- safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
- scentless mayweed — a similar and related plant, Matricaria maritima, with scentless leaves
- scheme repository — A collection of free Scheme programs.
- seaweed marquetry — marquetry having the form of symmetrical, foliate scrolls, as on English cabinetwork of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
- semi-permeability — permeable only to certain small molecules: a semipermeable membrane.
- semimicroanalysis — any analytical method in which the weight of the sample is between 10 and 100 milligrams.
- short-term memory — information retained in the brain and retrievable from it over a brief span of time (contrasted with long-term memory).
- shubra al khaymah — a city in NE Egypt, a Cairo suburb.
- shuttle diplomacy — diplomatic negotiations carried out by a mediator who travels back and forth between the negotiating parties.
- simplicity itself — If you say that something is simplicity itself, you are emphasizing that it is very simple or easy.
- socioeconomically — of, relating to, or signifying the combination or interaction of social and economic factors: socioeconomic study; socioeconomic status.