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21-letter words containing a, c, t, i, n

  • dictionary definition — the meaning of a word as given in a dictionary or dictionaries
  • differential calculus — the branch of mathematics that deals with differentials and derivatives.
  • direct inward dialing — (communications)   (DID) A service offered by telephone companies which allows the last 3 or 4 digits of a phone number to be transmitted to the destination exchange. For example, a company could have 10 incoming lines, all with the number 234 000. If a caller dials 234 697, the call is sent to 234 000 (the company's exchange), and the digits 697 are transmitted. The company's exchange then routes the call to extension 697. This gives the impression of 1000 direct dial lines, whereas in fact there are only 10. Obviously, only 10 at a time can be used. This system is also used by fax servers. Instead of an exchange at the end of the 234 000 line, a computer running fax server software and fax modem cards uses the last three digits to identify the recipient of the fax. This allows 1000 people to have their own individual fax numbers, even though there is only one 'fax machine'.
  • discretionary account — an account in which the stockbroker is allowed complete control over the purchase and sale of securities on the customer's behalf.
  • discriminant function — a linear function of measurements of different properties of an object or event that is used to assign the object or event to one population or another (discriminant analysis)
  • displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
  • distinctiveness ratio — the ratio of the relative frequency of some event in a given sample to that in the general population or another relevant sample
  • drop the handkerchief — a children's game in which all the players but one stand in a circle facing inward, while that one player stealthily drops a handkerchief behind a player in the circle who must pursue and attempt to catch the one who dropped the handkerchief before the latter reaches the vacated place.
  • dynamic data exchange — (language)   (DDE, originally Dynamic Data Linking, DDL) A Microsoft Windows 3 hotlink protocol that allows application programs to communicate using a client-server model. Whenever the server (or "publisher") modifies part of a document which is being shared via DDE, one or more clients ("subscribers") are informed and include the modification in the copy of the data on which they are working.
  • eccles-jordan circuit — flip-flop
  • educational sociology — the application of sociological principles and methods to the solution of problems in an educational system.
  • electric displacement — the electric flux density when an electric field exists in free space into which a dielectric is introduced
  • electric polarization — Electric polarization is the type of polarization of electricity that occurs in a dielectric.
  • electromagnetic field — a field of force associated with a moving electric charge equivalent to an electric field and a magnetic field at right angles to each other and to the direction of propagation
  • electromagnetic pulse — a surge of electromagnetic radiation, esp one resulting from a nuclear explosion, which can disrupt electronic devices and, occasionally, larger structures and equipment
  • emotional correctness — pressure on an individual to be seen to feel the same emotion as others
  • endoplasmic reticulum — an extensive intracellular membrane system whose functions include synthesis and transport of lipids and, in regions where ribosomes are attached, of proteins
  • enharmonic modulation — a change of key achieved by regarding a note in one key as an equivalent note in another. Thus E flat in the key of A flat could be regarded as D sharp in the key of B major
  • entrance requirements — the grades in school examinations required for admission to university
  • epidemic encephalitis — any type of widespread encephalitis caused by various viruses
  • exposure compensation — the act of overriding a camera's automatic exposure in order to achieve a particular effect or due to difficult lighting conditions
  • extended architecture — (storage)   (XA) A CD-ROM drive specification required by Green Book CD-ROM and White Book CD-ROM formats. Drives labelled "XA ready" may require a firmware upgrade.
  • faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
  • file allocation table — (file system)   (FAT) The component of an MS-DOS or Windows 95 file system which describes the files, directories, and free space on a hard disk or floppy disk. A disk is divided into partitions. Under the FAT file system each partition is divided into clusters, each of which can be one or more sectors, depending on the size of the partition. Each cluster is either allocated to a file or directory or it is free (unused). A directory lists the name, size, modification time and starting cluster of each file or subdirectory it contains. At the start of the partition is a table (the FAT) with one entry for each cluster. Each entry gives the number of the next cluster in the same file or a special value for "not allocated" or a special value for "this is the last cluster in the chain". The first few clusters after the FAT contain the root directory. The FAT file system was originally created for the CP/M[?] operating system where files were catalogued using 8-bit addressing. MS DOS's FAT allows only 8.3 filenames. With the introduction of MS-DOS 4 an incompatible 16-bit FAT (FAT16) with 32-kilobyte clusters was introduced that allowed partitions of up to 2 gigabytes. Microsoft later created FAT32 to support partitions larger than two gigabytes and pathnames greater that 256 characters. It also allows more efficient use of disk space since clusters are four kilobytes rather than 32 kilobytes. FAT32 was first available in OEM Service Release 2 of Windows 95 in 1996. It is not fully backward compatible with the 16-bit and 8-bit FATs. Compare: NTFS.
  • financial times index — one of the indexes of share prices produced by the Financial Times, especially the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index
  • financial underwriter — A financial underwriter is an insurance employee working in financial underwriting.
  • first consonant shift — the consonant shift described by Grimm's law, which distinguishes Germanic languages from other Indo-European languages.
  • first-round financing — First round financing is the first time a new company raises money from investors.
  • flotation compartment — in a boat, an enclosed section filled with air or gas to give buoyancy
  • food conversion ratio — a ratio expressing the weight of food required to produce a unit gain in the live weight of an animal
  • foreign exchange rate — the rate that specifies how much the currency of a nation is worth in terms of the currency of another nation
  • forensic anthropology — the branch of physical anthropology in which anthropological data, criteria, and techniques are used to determine the sex, age, genetic population, or parentage of skeletal or biological materials in questions of civil or criminal law.
  • fort lesley j. mcnair — a military reservation in SW Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River, SW of the Capitol.
  • fractional extraction — Fractional extraction is a process of extracting a liquid from a liquid, in which two solutes are separated, with one leaving in the extract and one in the raffinate.
  • framing specification — A specification of the "protocol bits" that surround the "data bits" on a communications channel to allow the data to be "framed" into chunks, like start and stop bits in EIA-232. It allows a receiver to synchronize at points along the data stream.
  • franco-belgian system — French system.
  • fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
  • french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
  • full faith and credit — the obligation under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution for each state to recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.
  • functional dependency — (database)   Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
  • functional illiterate — a person with some basic education who still falls short of a minimum standard of literacy or whose reading and writing skills are inadequate to everyday needs.
  • functional imperative — a requirement for the survival of any social system, as communication, control of conflict, or socialization.
  • gastrohepatic omentum — lesser omentum.
  • general court-martial — a court-martial having the authority to try any offense against military law and to impose a sentence of dishonorable discharge or of death when provided by law.
  • generic type variable — (programming)   (Also known as a "schematic type variable"). Different occurrences of a generic type variable in a type expression may be instantiated to different types. Thus, in the expression let id x = x in (id True, id 1) id's type is (for all a: a -> a). The universal quantifier "for all a:" means that a is a generic type variable. For the two uses of id, a is instantiated to Bool and Int. Compare this with let id x = x in let f g = (g True, g 1) in f id This looks similar but f has no legal Hindley-Milner type. If we say f :: (a -> b) -> (b, b) this would permit g's type to be any instance of (a -> b) rather than requiring it to be at least as general as (a -> b). Furthermore, it constrains both instances of g to have the same result type whereas they do not. The type variables a and b in the above are implicitly quantified at the top level: f :: for all a: for all b: (a -> b) -> (b, b) so instantiating them (removing the quantifiers) can only be done once, at the top level. To correctly describe the type of f requires that they be locally quantified: f :: ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)) -> (c, d) which means that each time g is applied, a and b may be instantiated differently. f's actual argument must have a type at least as general as ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)), and may not be some less general instance of this type. Type variables c and d are still implicitly quantified at the top level and, now that g's result type is a generic type variable, any types chosen for c and d are guaranteed to be instances of it. This type for f does not express the fact that b only needs to be at least as general as the types c and d. For example, if c and d were both Bool then any function of type (for all a: a -> Bool) would be a suitable argument to f but it would not match the above type for f.
  • genetic amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
  • give place to someone — to make room for or be superseded by someone
  • glacier national park — a national park in NW Montana: glaciers; lakes; forest reserve. 1534 sq. mi. (3970 sq. km).
  • grammatical inference — Deducing a grammar from given examples. Also known as "inductive inference" and recently as "computational learning".
  • greenwich observatory — the national astronomical observatory of Great Britain, housed in a castle in E Sussex; formerly located at Greenwich.
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