16-letter words containing u, s, a
- miscommunication — Failure to communicate adequately.
- misconfiguration — An incorrect or inappropriate configuration.
- mispronunciation — (uncountable) The act of mispronouncing.
- missile launcher — system that fires missiles
- mistletoe cactus — a tropical, branched cactus, Rhipsalis baccifera (or cassutha), having cylindrical stems and mistletoelike fruit.
- misunderestimate — (colloquial, malapropism, or, intentionally incorrect) To underestimate by mistake.
- misunderstanding — failure to understand correctly; mistake as to meaning or intent.
- modern languages — languages currently spoken
- montagu's blenny — a small blenny, Coryphoblennius galerita, found among rocks in shallow water
- montes apenninus — a mountain range in the first and second quadrants of the visible face of the moon, forming the SE border of Mare Imbrium: about 600 miles (970 km) long.
- month of sundays — a long time
- monumental mason — a person who makes gravestones and suchlike
- mortgagee clause — a clause attached to a fire-insurance policy for protecting a mortgagee against loss or damage.
- mossbauer effect — the phenomenon in which an atom in a crystal undergoes no recoil when emitting a gamma ray, giving all the emitted energy to the gamma ray, resulting in a sharply defined wavelength.
- mothering sunday — Laetare Sunday.
- mount erymanthus — a mountain in SW Greece, in the NW Peloponnese. Height: 2224 m (7297 ft)
- mount washington — a mountain in N New Hampshire, in the White Mountains: the highest peak in the northeast US; noted for extreme weather conditions. Height: 1917 m (6288 ft)
- mourne mountains — a mountain range in SE Northern Ireland. Highest peak: Slieve Donard, 853 m (2798 ft)
- mousseline sauce — a light sauce, made by adding whipped cream or egg whites to hollandaise sauce
- muddleheadedness — The state of being muddle-headed.
- muddy the waters — If someone or something muddies the waters, they cause a situation or issue to seem less clear and less easy to understand.
- multiculturalism — the state or condition of being multicultural.
- multiculturalist — Pertaining to or advocating multiculturalism.
- multidimensional — Mathematics. a property of space; extension in a given direction: A straight line has one dimension, a parallelogram has two dimensions, and a parallelepiped has three dimensions. the generalization of this property to spaces with curvilinear extension, as the surface of a sphere. the generalization of this property to vector spaces and to Hilbert space. the generalization of this property to fractals, which can have dimensions that are noninteger real numbers. extension in time: Space-time has three dimensions of space and one of time.
- multifariousness — (uncountable) The characteristic of being multifarious.
- multinationalism — a large corporation with operations and subsidiaries in several countries.
- multiple alleles — any one of a series of three or more alternative or allelic forms of a gene, only two of which can exist in any normal, diploid individual.
- multiple factors — polygene.
- 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.]
- murasaki shikibu — Lady, 978?–1031? Japanese poet and novelist.
- musculocutaneous — of, relating to, or supplying the muscles and skin
- musical director — A musical director is the same as a music director.
- mustard-coloured — of a brownish-yellow colour
- mutation testing — (testing) A method to determine test set thoroughness by measuring the extent to which a test set can discriminate the program from slight variants of the program.
- mutatis mutandis — the necessary changes having been made.
- mutual exclusion — (parallel, operating system) (Or "mutex", plural: "mutexes") A collection of techniques for sharing resources so that different uses do not conflict and cause unwanted interactions. One of the most commonly used techniques for mutual exclusion is the semaphore.
- mutual insurance — insurance in which those insured become members of a company who reciprocally engage, by payment of certain amounts into a common fund, to indemnify one another against loss.
- mutual recursion — recursion
- nash equilibrium — (in game theory) a stable state of a system involving the interaction of two or more players in which no player can gain by a unilateral change of strategy if the strategies of the other players remain unchanged
- nassella tussock — type of tussock grass
- national costume — traditional dress
- natural disaster — meteorological or geological catastrophe
- natural resource — a naturally occurring source of wealth, as land or water.
- naturalistically — imitating nature or the usual natural surroundings.
- neo-confucianist — of or relating to neo-Confucians or neo-Confucianism.
- neurasthenically — In a neurasthenic way.
- neurohypophyseal — Relating to the neurohypophysis.
- neurohypophysial — Relating to the neurohypophysis.
- neuropathologies — the pathology of the nervous system.
- neuropathologist — A specialist who practices neuropathology.