22-letter words containing a, d, p, t, o, r
- interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
- let sth drop/fall/slip — If you let drop, let fall, or let slip information, you reveal it casually or by accident, during a conversation about something else.
- liberal democrat party — The Liberal Democrat Party is the third largest political party in Britain and the main centre party. It believes in improving the constitution and the voting system and in providing good welfare services.
- lord justice of appeal — an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal
- not be sb's department — If you say that a task or area of knowledge is not your department, you mean that you are not responsible for it or do not know much about it.
- object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
- operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
- operational data store — (database) (ODS) A group of integrated databases designed to support the monitoring of operations. Unlike function oriented databases, an ODS contains subject-oriented, dynamic, current enterprise-wide information that is continually updated to show the current state of operations.
- outside awareness port — (humour) (OAP) A humorous IBM term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the GUI kind.
- parker morris standard — (in Britain) a set of minimum criteria for good housing construction, design, and facilities, recommended by the 1961 report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Parker Morris. Subsequent governments have urged private and local authority house-builders to achieve these standards
- paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
- pay dearly/cost dearly — If you pay dearly for doing something or if it costs you dearly, you suffer a lot as a result.
- personal rapid transit — a short system of small, self-propelled, automated, rubber-tired vehicles that usually run on elevated concrete tracks and allow a passenger a limited selection of routes, as in an amusement park or at an airport. Abbreviation: PRT.
- picture of dorian gray — a novel (1891) by Oscar Wilde.
- planck's radiation law — the law that energy associated with electromagnetic radiation, as light, is composed of discrete quanta of energy, each quantum equal to Planck's constant times the corresponding frequency of the radiation: the fundamental law of quantum mechanics.
- play one's cards right — a usually rectangular piece of stiff paper, thin pasteboard, or plastic for various uses, as to write information on or printed as a means of identifying the holder: a 3″ × 5″ file card; a membership card.
- portable standard lisp — (language) (PSL) A dialect of Lisp from Utah University. PSL is available as a kit for 68000 and also runs on VAX. It compiles Lisp to C-code virtual machine language.
- post office department — former name of United States Postal Service.
- potassium ferricyanide — a bright-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 3 Fe(CN) 6 , used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, as Prussian blue, and of paper, especially blueprint paper.
- potassium ferrocyanide — a lemon-yellow, crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 4 Fe(CN) 6 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in casehardening alloys having an iron base and in dyeing wool and silk.
- potassium-argon dating — a method for estimating the age of a mineral or rock, based on measurement of the rate of decay of radioactive potassium into argon.
- preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
- primate of all england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- procurement department — the department of (a company, organization, etc) responsible for purchasing and buying
- productivity agreement — an agreement whereby the employees of an organization agree to changes which are intended to improve productivity in return for an increase in pay or other benefits
- programmed instruction — a progressively monitored, step-by-step teaching method, employing small units of information or learning material and frequent testing, whereby the student must complete or pass one stage before moving on to the next.
- propositional attitude — a relation between a person and a proposition, such as belief, desire, intention, etc
- public domain software — public domain
- pure food and drug act — a law passed in 1906 to remove harmful and misrepresented foods and drugs from the market and regulate the manufacture and sale of drugs and food involved in interstate trade.
- rapid deployment force — a U.S. military organization consisting of one Marine division and four Army divisions, established in 1979 to respond quickly to any distant threat to national interests.
- received pronunciation — the pronunciation of British English considered to have the widest geographical distribution and the fewest regional peculiarities, originally the pronunciation of educated speakers in southern England and traditionally that used in the public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge universities, adopted by many speakers elsewhere in England and widely used in broadcasting. Abbreviation: RP.
- reliable data protocol — (protocol) (RDP) A protocol designed to provide a reliable data transport service for packet-based applications such as remote loading and debugging. RDP is intended to be simple to implement but still be efficient in environments where there may be long transmission delays and loss or non-sequential delivery of message segments. RDP is defined in RFC 908.
- reproductive isolation — the conditions, as physiological or behavioral differences or geographical barriers, that prevent potentially interbreeding populations from cross-fertilization.
- respond to a complaint — If you respond to a complaint, you answer a customer who expressed their dissatisfaction with something.
- rheumatoid spondylitis — ankylosing spondylitis.
- scissors-and-paste job — if you describe a piece of work as a scissors and paste job, you mean that it has been mechanically compiled, as if by simply cutting and pasting different parts to make a new whole
- secondary spermatocyte — See under spermatocyte.
- side-impact protection — a device that is intended to protect a car and its passengers in the event of a collision at the side
- split-dollar insurance — life insurance in which someone helps pay the premiums for another, as when an employer contributes to the premiums of an employee's policy.
- st-pierre and miquelon — group of islands in the Atlantic, south of Newfoundland, constituting a political unit of France: includes the islands of St-Pierre (c. 10 sq mi, 26 sq km) & Miquelon & several islets: 93 sq mi (241 sq km); pop. 6,000
- structured programming — the design and coding of programs by a methodology (top-down) that successively breaks problems into smaller, nested subunits.
- supreme judicial court — (often initial capital letters) the highest court in some states, as Massachusetts and Maine.
- tapered roller bearing — a rolling bearing that uses tapered rollers running in coned races and is able to accept axial thrust as well as providing shaft location
- targa graphics adaptor — (graphics, file format) (TGA) The Truevision Targa Graphics Adaptor file format. The TGA format is a common bitmap file format for storage of 24-bit images. It supports colourmaps, alpha channels, compression and comments. More information is available from Truevision and The Graphics File Format Page.
- the (great) depression — the period of economic depression which began in 1929 and lasted through most of the 1930s
- the great leap forward — the attempt by the People's Republic of China in 1959–60 to solve the country's economic problems by labour-intensive industrialization
- the medical profession — the occupation of working as a doctor of medicine
- to drop someone a line — If you drop someone a line, you write to them.
- to overplay one's hand — If someone overplays their hand, they act more confidently than they should because they believe that they are in a stronger position than they actually are.
- to swallow one's pride — If you swallow your pride, you decide to do something even though you think it will cause you to lose some respect.