24-letter words containing a, c, e, p, t
- public-access television — a noncommercial system of broadcasting on television channels made available to independent or community groups for programs of general interest to the community.
- punch above one's weight — to do something that is considered to be beyond one's ability
- pure functional language — purely functional language
- pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
- reciprocal translocation — an exchange of segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes.
- recommended retail price — the selling price of a product officially suggested by a manufacturer to a retailer
- recursive descent parser — (grammar) A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
- referential transparency — (programming) An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchanged without changing the value of E. This is not the case if the value of an expression depends on global state which can change value. The most common example of changing global state is assignment to a global variable. For example, if y is a global variable in: f(x) { return x+y; } g(z) { a = f(1); y = y + z; return a + f(1); } function g has the "side-effect" that it alters the value of y. Since f's result depends on y, the two calls to f(1) will return different results even though the argument is the same. Thus f is not referentially transparent. Changing the order of evaluation of the statements in g will change its result. We could make f above referentially transparent by passing in y as an argument: f(x, y) = x+y Similarly, g would need to take y as an argument and return its new value as part of the result: g(z, y) { a = f(1, y); y' = y+z; return (a + f(1, y'), y'); } Referentially transparent programs are more amenable to formal methods and easier to reason about because the meaning of an expression depends only on the meaning of its subexpressions and not on the order of evaluation or side-effects of other expressions. We can stretch the concept of referential transparency to include input and output if we consider the whole program to be a function from its input to its output. The program as a whole is referentially transparent because it will always produce the same output when given the same input. This is stretching the concept because the program's input may include what the user types, the content of certain files or even the time of day. If we do not consider global state like the contents of files as input, then writing to a file and reading what was written behaves just like assignment to a global variable. However, if we must consider the state of the universe as an input rather than global state then any deterministic system would be referentially transparent! See also extensional equality, observational equivalence.
- representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
- reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
- republic of south africa — Republic of, a country in S Africa; member of the Commonwealth of Nations until 1961. 472,000 sq. mi. (1,222,480 sq. km). Capitals: Pretoria and Cape Town.
- resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
- research and development — the part of a commercial company's activity concerned with applying the results of scientific research to develop new products and improve existing ones
- responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
- rose-coloured spectacles — If you look at a person or situation through rose-coloured glasses or rose-tinted glasses, you see only their good points and therefore your view of them is unrealistic. In British English, you can also say that someone is looking through rose-coloured spectacles.
- scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web) A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
- scholastic aptitude test — a standard assessment test for entry into college in the United States
- sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
- serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
- skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
- socialist workers' party — one of the biggest extreme left wing parties in Britain
- special checking account — a checking account that requires no minimum balance but in which a small charge is made for each check issued or drawn and for monthly maintenance.
- special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
- statistical independence — the condition or state of events or values of being statistically independent.
- stereographic projection — a one-to-one correspondence between the points on a sphere and the extended complex plane where the north pole on the sphere corresponds to the point at infinity of the plane.
- sulphur-crested cockatoo — a large Australian white parrot, Kakatoe galerita, with a yellow erectile crest
- supportive psychotherapy — a type of psychotherapy that seeks to reduce psychological conflict and strengthen a patient's defenses through the use of various techniques, as reassurance, suggestion, counseling, and reeducation.
- telephony user interface — (communications) (TUI) Either a software interface to telephony (e.g. a phone-capable PC) or a DTMF-based interface to software (e.g. voicemail).
- telescope user interface — (hardware, interface) (TUI) A remote control interface for a telescope.
- the villain of the piece — If you say that someone is the villain of the piece, you are saying in a slightly humorous way that they are seen by some people as the cause of all the trouble in a particular situation.
- thompson sub-machine-gun — a .45 calibre sub-machine-gun
- three-spined stickleback — a small teleost fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, of the family Gasterosteidae, of rivers and coastal regions, having three spines along the back and occurring in cold and temperate northern regions
- to cramp someone's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behaviour in some way.
- to light the touch paper — if someone lights the touch paper or lights the blue touch paper, they do something which causes anger or excitement
- to pick someone's brains — If you pick someone's brains, you ask them to help you with a problem because they know more about the subject than you.
- transpersonal psychology — a branch of psychology or psychotherapy that recognizes altered states of consciousness and transcendent experiences as a means to understand the human mind and treat psychological disordrs.
- tricyclic antidepressant — pertaining to or embodying three cycles.
- trip the light fantastic — a journey or voyage: to win a trip to Paris.
- tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
- usb adapter card support — (communications, software) A set of software extensions that provide support for USB adapter cards installed in the PCI bus or Cardbus slots in Macintosh computers that do not have built-in USB ports.
- variable pitch propeller — a propeller in which the angle of the blades with regard to air flow can be adjusted while it is in operation
- visual component library — (programming) VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
- wired equivalent privacy — (networking, standard) (WEP) IEEE 802.11:1999. A cryptographic privacy algorithm, based on the RC4 encryption engine, used to provide confidentiality for 802.11 wireless networks. WEP is intended to provide roughly the same level of confidentiality for wireless data as a wired LAN (Ethernet), which is NOT protected by encryption. WEP is often wrongly expanded as "Wireless Encryption Protocol". WEP is a protocol that provides encryption used on wireless networks but that's not what it stands for.
- within spitting distance — If one place is within spitting distance of another, they are very close to each other.