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24-letter words containing a, f, t

  • open software foundation — (body)   (OSF) A foundation created by nine computer vendors, (Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips, Siemens and Hitachi) to promote "Open Computing". It is planned that common operating systems and interfaces, based on developments of Unix and the X Window System will be forthcoming for a wide range of different hardware architectures. OSF announced the release of the industry's first open operating system - OSF/1 on 23 October 1990.
  • out of all proportion to — If you say that something is out of all proportion to something else, you think that it is far greater or more serious than it should be.
  • particulate fluidization — Particulate fluidization is a condition when particles in a fluidized bed are individually suspended.
  • passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
  • permeability coefficient — the volume of an incompressible fluid that will flow in unit time through a unit cube of a porous substance across which a unit pressure difference is maintained
  • photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
  • pluck sth out of the air — If you say that someone plucks a figure, name, or date out of the air, you mean that they say it without thinking much about it before they speak.
  • portable document format — (file format)   (PDF) The native file format for Adobe Systems' Acrobat. PDF is the file format for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. A PDF file can describe documents containing any combination of text, graphics, and images in a device-independent and resolution independent format. These documents can be one page or thousands of pages, very simple or extremely complex with a rich use of fonts, graphics, colour, and images.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • professional association — a body of persons engaged in the same profession, formed usually to control entry into the profession, maintain standards, and represent the profession in discussions with other bodies
  • professional corporation — a corporation formed by one or more licensed practitioners, especially medical or legal, to operate their practices on a corporate plan. Abbreviation: PC, P.C.
  • program information file — (file format)   Under Windows, a file providing information on how a non-Windows application program should be run, including how much memory should be allocated to it and what graphics interface it requires.
  • public relations officer — a person who is responsible for communications with the public
  • pure functional language — purely functional language
  • put the fear of god into — a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security, calm, intrepidity.
  • quadrature of the circle — the insoluble problem of constructing, by the methods of Euclidean geometry, a square equal in area to a given circle.
  • quick-assembly furniture — furniture such as shelves and cupboards which you buy as a number of separate pieces and assemble yourself
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ricardian theory of rent — economic rent.
  • rocky mountain whitefish — mountain whitefish.
  • rubaiyat of omar khayyam — a free translation (first published in 1859) by Edward FitzGerald of a group of quatrains by the Persian poet Omar Khayyám.
  • saint ignatius of loyola — Saint Ignatius of (Iñigo López de Loyola) 1491–1556, Spanish soldier and ecclesiastic: founder of the Society of Jesus.
  • schizoaffective disorder — a psychotic disorder in which symptoms of schizophrenia and affective disorder occur simultaneously.
  • see someone hanged first — to refuse absolutely to do what one has been asked
  • self-extensible language — ["SEL - A Self-Extensible Programming Language", G. Molnar, Computer J 14(3):238-242 (Aug 1971)].
  • senegambia confederation — an economic and political union (1982–89) between Senegal and The Gambia
  • serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
  • shadow foreign secretary — the member of the main opposition party in Parliament who would hold the office of Foreign Secretary if their party were in power
  • single transferable vote — of or relating to a system of voting in which voters list the candidates in order of preference. Any candidate achieving a predetermined proportion of the votes in a constituency is elected. Votes exceeding this amount and those cast for the bottom candidate are redistributed according to the stated preferences. Redistribution continues until all the seats are filled
  • split image range finder — a range finder in which opposing halves of a split field move relative to each other and coincide when the object centered in the field is in focus.
  • standard housing benefit — a rebate of a proportion of a person's eligible housing costs paid by a local authority and calculated on the basis of level of income and family size
  • stratificational grammar — a grammar based upon the theory that language is made up of successive strata that are interconnected by established rules.
  • stratified charge engine — an internal-combustion engine in which a small charge of a rich fuel mixture is ignited first and used to improve combustion of a larger charge of a lean fuel mixture.
  • stratified random sample — a random sample of a population in which the population is first divided into distinct subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then taken separately from each stratum.
  • structural functionalism — functionalism (def 3).
  • tagged image file format — (file format, graphics)   (TIFF) A file format used for still-image bitmaps, stored in tagged fields. Application programs can use the tags to accept or ignore fields, depending on their capabilities. While TIFF was designed to be extensible, it lacked a core of useful functionality, so that most useful functions (e.g. lossless 24-bit colour) requires nonstandard, often redundant, extensions. The incompatibility of extensions has led some to expand "TIFF" as "Thousands of Incompatible File Formats". Compare GIF, PNG, JPEG.
  • take someone for granted — If you say that someone takes you for granted, you are complaining that they benefit from your help, efforts, or presence without showing that they are grateful.
  • tear someone off a strip — to rebuke (someone) angrily
  • 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 department of health — a department of the government of the United Kingdom concerned with governmental policy relating to health in England but not elsewhere in the United Kingdom
  • the last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
  • the official secrets act — an act of Parliament that covers the protection of information relating to state security
  • the ravages of something — the destructive effects of something
  • the realm of possibility — If you say that something is not beyond the realms of possibility, you mean that it is possible.
  • the red badge of courage — a novel (1895) by Stephen Crane.
  • the suffragette movement — a movement advocating of the extension of the franchise to women, as in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century
  • 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.
  • the wars of the diadochi — a series of conflicts between 321 and 281 bc, fought by six Macedonian generals who, after the death of Alexander the Great, desired control of his empire
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