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20-letter words containing a, g, r, i

  • integrity constraint — (database)   A constraint (rule) that must remain true for a database to preserve data integrity. Integrity constraints are specified at database creation time and enforced by the database management system. Examples from a genealogical database would be that every individual must be their parent's child or that they can have no more than two natural parents.
  • intelligent terminal — (hardware)   (or "smart terminal", "programmable terminal") A terminal that often contains not only a keyboard and screen, but also comes with a disk drive and printer, so it can perform limited processing tasks when not communicating directly with the central computer. Some can be programmed by the user to perform many basic tasks, including both arithmetic and logic operations. In some cases, when the user enters data, the data will be checked for errors and some type of report will be produced. In addition, the valid data that is entered may be stored on the disk, it will be transmitted over communication lines to the central computer. An intelligent terminal may have enough computing capability to draw graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behaviour of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using said devices as displays. The term once meant any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned above, is called a dumb terminal. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate". This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. Compare hook.
  • international gothic — a style of Gothic art, especially painting, developed in Europe in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, chiefly characterized by details carefully delineated in a naturalistic manner, elongated and delicately modeled forms, the use of complex perspective, and an emphasis on the decorative or ornamental aspect of drapery, foliage, or setting.
  • international orange — a shade of bright orange, highly visible at a great distance and in murky weather, used to color aircraft, airport towers and hangars, boats, etc., for safety or rescue purposes.
  • intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
  • into/in cold storage — If you put an idea or plan into cold storage or in cold storage, you delay it for a while rather than acting on it as you originally intended.
  • intravenous drug use — the injection of drugs intravenously
  • islets of langerhans — biology: pancreatic cells
  • java message service — (programming, messaging)   (JMS) An API for accessing enterprise messaging systems from Java programs. Java Message Service, part of the J2EE suite, provides standard APIs that Java developers can use to access the common features of enterprise message systems. JMS supports the publish/subscribe and point-to-point models and allows the creation of message types consisting of arbitrary Java objects. JMS provides support for administration, security, error handling, and recovery, optimisation, distributed transactions, message ordering, message acknowledgment, and more.
  • judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
  • junior featherweight — a boxer weighing up to 122 pounds (54.9 kg), between bantamweight and featherweight.
  • keep a straight face — look serious, avoid smiling
  • keep a tight rein on — to control carefully; limit
  • king charles spaniel — a variety of the English toy spaniel having a black-and-tan coat.
  • knight of the garter — a knight who belongs to the Order of the Garter
  • knights hospitallers — a military religious order founded about the time of the first crusade (1096–99) among European crusaders. It took its name from a hospital and hostel in Jerusalem
  • kruger national park — a wildlife sanctuary in NE South Africa: the world's largest game reserve. Area: over 21 700 sq km (8400 sq miles)
  • la canada-flintridge — a town in SW California.
  • laboratory diagnosis — scientific analysis of a disease
  • labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
  • lacto-ovo-vegetarian — Also called lactovarian [lak-tuh-vair-ee-uh n] /ˌlæk təˈvɛər i ən/ (Show IPA), ovolactarian, ovo-lacto-vegetarian. a vegetarian whose diet includes dairy products and eggs.
  • languedoc-roussillon — a region of S France, on the Gulf of Lions: consists of the departments of Lozère, Gard, Hérault, Aude, and Pyrénées-Orientales; mainly mountainous with a coastal plain
  • legal representation — representation by a lawyer
  • light the touchpaper — to do something that will cause much anger or excitement
  • linage advertisement — advertisements which are costed and paid for according to the number of lines in them
  • linguistic geography — dialect geography.
  • linguistic universal — language universal.
  • literate programming — (programming, text)   Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
  • llanfairpwllgwyngyll — a village in NW Wales, in SE Anglesey: reputed to be the longest place name in Great Britain when unabbreviated; means: St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool of Llandysilio of the red cave
  • logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
  • logical construction — anything referred to by an incomplete symbol capable of contextual definition.
  • logical link control — (networking)   (LLC) The upper portion of the data link layer, as defined in IEEE 802.2. The LLC sublayer presents a uniform interface to the user of the data link service, usually the network layer. Beneath the LLC sublayer is the Media Access Control (MAC) sublayer.
  • longitudinal framing — a system for framing steel vessels in which light, closely spaced, longitudinal frames are connected by heavy, widely spaced transverse frames with deep webs.
  • lord high chancellor — the highest judicial officer of the British crown: law adviser of the ministry, keeper of the great seal, presiding officer in the House of Lords, etc.
  • lou gehrig's disease — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
  • lymphogranulomatosis — widespread infectious granuloma of the lymphatic system.
  • macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
  • magdeburg hemisphere — one of a pair of hemispherical cups from which air can be evacuated when they are placed together: used to demonstrate the force of air pressure.
  • magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
  • magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
  • magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
  • magnification factor — the size of a magnified image of an object divided by the size of the object itself
  • mail exchange record — (messaging)   (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
  • mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
  • mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
  • malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
  • marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
  • marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
  • marriage certificate — official document recording a marriage
  • mass-energy equation — the equation, E=mc2, formulated by Albert Einstein, expressing the equivalence between mass and energy, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light.
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