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21-letter words containing a, e, g, y

  • greenwich observatory — the national astronomical observatory of Great Britain, housed in a castle in E Sussex; formerly located at Greenwich.
  • happy little vegemite — a person who is in good humour
  • henry steele commager — Henry Steele, 1902–98, U.S. historian, author, and teacher.
  • homogeneous catalysis — Homogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst takes part in the reaction that it increases.
  • hypogammaglobulinemia — A type of immune disorder characterised by a reduction in all types of gamma globulins.
  • hysterosalpingography — (medicine) X-ray examination of the uterus and oviducts following injection of a radiopaque substance.
  • lactate dehydrogenase — an enzyme that catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate, an important step in carbohydrate metabolism: elevated serum levels indicate injury to kidney, skeletal muscle, or heart muscle. Abbreviation: LDH.
  • lady macbeth strategy — a strategy in a takeover battle in which a third party makes a bid acceptable to the target company, appearing to act as a white knight but subsequently joining forces with the original (unwelcome) bidder
  • liability engineering — the practice by a company of taking steps to avoid liability for any fraudulent dealings with it, such as making a credit-card owner responsible for any abuses of the card by a third party
  • macgillicuddy's reeks — a mountain range in County Kerry, SW Ireland. Highest peak (also highest in Ireland), Carrantuohill, 3414 feet (1041 meters).
  • magnetic flux density — Also called magnetic flux density. a vector quantity used as a measure of a magnetic field. Symbol: B.
  • magnetic permeability — permeability (def 2).
  • magnetofluid dynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
  • mayor of casterbridge — a novel (1886) by Thomas Hardy.
  • mechanical metallurgy — the branch of metallurgy dealing with the response of metals to applied forces.
  • miniature photography — photography with a camera using film that is 35 millimeters wide or less.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • open graphics library — (graphics, library)   (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
  • orthogonal trajectory — the locus of a point whose path cuts each curve of a family of curves at right angles.
  • pacific daylight time — the version of Pacific Standard Time that is in use when daylight saving time is being observed
  • pdp assembly language — (language)   (PAL) The assembly language for the PDP-8 and PDP-11.
  • physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
  • pneumoencephalography — encephalography.
  • polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
  • program temporary fix — (programming)   (PTF) (Colloquially: Probably This Fixes) An IBM sanctioned patch, often implemented using ZAP or SUPERZAP.
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
  • pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
  • pure imaginary number — a complex number of the form iy where y is a real number and i = .
  • pyrenean mountain dog — a large heavily built dog of an ancient breed originally used to protect sheep from wild animals: it has a long thick white coat with a dense ruff
  • quality point average — grade point average.
  • rayleigh distribution — (mathematics)   A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
  • real operating system — (operating system, abuse)   The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
  • rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
  • referential integrity — (database)   A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database. For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.
  • ring-around-the-rosey — a children's game in which the players sing while going around in a circle and squat when the lyrics “all fall down” are sung.
  • salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
  • santo tome de guayana — a city in NE Venezuela, on the Orinoco River.
  • saving your reverence — a form of apology for using an obscene or taboo expression
  • schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
  • seven-segment display — (electronics)   (SSD) A kind of display element consisting of seven independently controllable lines arranged as a rectangular figure eight. A seven-segment display is the simplest device that can display any of the digits zero to nine (and some other characters) by lighting different combinations of lines. They are often seen in electronic calculators or measuring equipment.
  • system management bus — (hardware, protocol)   (SMBus, SMB) A simple two-wire bus used for communication with low-bandwidth devices on a motherboard, especially power related chips such as a laptop's rechargeable battery subsystem (see Smart Battery Data). Other devices might include temperature sensors and lid switches. A device can provide manufacturer information, indicate its model/part number, save its state for a suspend event, report different types of errors, accept control parameters, and return status. The SMB is generally not user configurable or accessible. The bus carries clock, data, and instructions and is based on Philip's I2C serial bus protocol. Support for SMBus devices is provided on Windows 2000. Windows 98 does not support such devices. The PIIX4 chipset provides SMBus functionality. Vendors using SMBus would be required to pay royalties.
  • tape operating system — (operating system)   (TOS) An IBM operating system for System 360, used in the early days around 1965 to support the IBM 360 model 30 et al. TOS was a predecessor to IBM's Disk Operating System. TOS died out really early as disks such as the 2311 and 2314 became common with the IBM 360 whereas thet had been a real luxury on the IBM 7090.
  • the royal scots greys — (formerly) a British cavalry regiment, the Second Dragoons
  • threshold wage policy — a policy whereby wages are increased in accordance with inflation
  • to be arrayed against — to be opposed to
  • to give the game away — If someone or something gives the game away, they reveal a secret or reveal their feelings, and this puts them at a disadvantage.
  • to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
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