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18-letter words containing t, a, r, y, o

  • 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.
  • magnetoelectricity — electricity developed by the action of magnets.
  • market opportunity — a situation in which a company can meet an unsatisfied customer need before its competitors
  • maternity hospital — birthing facility
  • may flower compact — an agreement to establish a government, entered into by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620.
  • medical dictionary — a specialized dictionary covering terms used in the health professions by doctors, nurses, and others involved in allied health care services. A dictionary with authoritative spellings and definitions is a particularly crucial resource in medicine, where a misspelling or misunderstanding can have unfortunate consequences for people under care. Print dictionaries in this field may be sorted alphabetically or may be categorized according to medical specializations or by the various systems in the body, as the immune system and the respiratory system. The online Medical Dictionary on Dictionary.com allows alphabetical browsing in the combined electronic versions of more than one authoritative medical reference, insuring access to correct spellings, as well as immediate, direct access to a known search term typed into the search box on the site: A medical dictionary reveals that large numbers of medical terms are formed from the same Latin and Greek parts combined and recombined.
  • 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.
  • microcrystallinity — The condition of being microcrystalline.
  • micropalaeontology — the branch of palaeontology concerned with the study of microscopic fossils
  • military policeman — A military policeman is a member of the military police.
  • minority programme — a programme that appeals to a minority of the available audience
  • monetary aggregate — a measure of the money in circulation.
  • monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
  • montgomery village — a city in central Maryland.
  • mountain cranberry — cowberry
  • 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.
  • myeloproliferative — (medicine) of or pertaining to the presence of an abnormal proliferation of myelopoietic cells (from bone marrow).
  • 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.
  • neuroophthalmology — the branch of ophthalmology that deals with the optic nerve and other nervous system structures involved in vision.
  • 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.
  • nobiliary particle — a preposition forming part of a title of nobility or surname, as French de or German von.
  • nonvolatile memory — computer memory that can retain stored information even when not powered, for example read-only memory
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • now you're talking — at last you're saying something agreeable
  • numerical taxonomy — classification of organisms by a comparison of large numbers of observable characteristics that are given equal value instead of being weighted according to possible evolutionary significance.
  • octachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twelve isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing eight chlorine atoms.
  • officer of the day — an officer who has charge of the guard and prisoners on an assigned day at a military installation. Abbreviation: OD, O.D., O.O.D.
  • offset lithography — offset (def 6).
  • one way or another — somehow, by some means
  • 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.
  • ovariohysterectomy — Surgical removal of the ovaries and uterus.
  • overdraft facility — a facility (of a bank or building-society cheque account) that allows a withdrawal of money in excess of the account's credit balance
  • owen stanley range — a mountain range in SE New Guinea. Highest peak: Mount Victoria, 4073 m (13 363 ft)
  • palaeoanthropology — the branch of anthropology concerned with primitive man
  • parathyroid glands — any of several small oval glands usually lying near or embedded in the thyroid gland.
  • pave the way (for) — to prepare the way (for); facilitate the introduction (of)
  • pay one's respects — a particular, detail, or point (usually preceded by in): to differ in some respect.
  • pellitory of spain — a small Mediterranean plant, Anacyclus pyrethrum, the root of which contains an oil formerly used to relieve toothache: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • perforated tracery — tracery, as in early Gothic architecture, formed of cut or pierced slabs of stone set on edge with the flat side outward.
  • perlocutionary act — the action of affecting someone by uttering certain words
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