25-letter words containing a, h, n
- high voltage differential — (hardware) (HVD) Differential SCSI scheme that has been in use for years. The terminators run on 5 Volts DC. See also LVD.
- hoist by one's own petard — an explosive device formerly used in warfare to blow in a door or gate, form a breach in a wall, etc.
- home entertainment system — equipment for watching films and listening to music at home
- homothetic transformation — similarity transformation (def 1).
- homothetic-transformation — Also called homothetic transformation. a mapping of a set by which each element in the set is mapped into a positive constant multiple of itself, the same constant being used for all elements.
- honi soit qui mal y pense — shamed be he who thinks evil of it: the motto of the Order of the Garter
- hospitalization insurance — insurance to cover, in whole or in part, the hospital bills of a subscriber or of his or her dependents.
- house of the seven gables — a novel (1851) by Hawthorne.
- human embryonic stem cell — a stem cell obtained from the blastocyst of a human embryo
- human resource management — the management of the workforce of an organization
- human-factors engineering — an applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker.
- hypertext markup language — (hypertext, web, standard) (HTML) A hypertext document format used on the web. HTML is built on top of SGML. "Tags" are embedded in the text. A tag consists of a "<", a "directive" (in lower case), zero or more parameters and a ">". Matched pairs of directives, like "
" and " " are used to delimit text which is to appear in a special place or style. Links to other documents are in the form foo where "" and "" delimit an "anchor", "href" introduces a hypertext reference, which is most often a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (the string in double quotes in the example above). The link will be represented in the browser by the text "foo" (typically shown underlined and in a different colour). A certain place within an HTML document can be marked with a named anchor, e.g.: The "fragment identifier", "baz", can be used in an href by appending "#baz" to the document name. Other common tags includefor a new paragraph, .. for bold text,
- for an unnumbered list,
for preformated text,
,
..
for headings. Most systems will ignore the case of tags and attributes but lower case should be used for compatibility with XHTML. The web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards body for HTML. See also weblint.
- i didn't change anything! — An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The canonical reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also one-line fix. This is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually hosed the code completely.
- i don't know (about that) — You can use I don't know to indicate that you do not completely agree with something or do not really think that it is true.
- in (or out of) character — consistent with (or inconsistent with) the role or general character
- in (or out of) mothballs — put into (or taken from) a condition of being stored or in reserve
- in the foreseeable future — If you say that something will happen in the foreseeable future you mean that you think it will happen fairly soon.
- in the heat of the moment — without pausing to think
- in the palm of one's hand — If you have someone or something in the palm of your hand, you have control over them.
- indirect characterization — the process by which the personality of a fictitious character is revealed through the character's speech, actions, appearance, etc.
- industrial rehabilitation — the treatment of people who have acquired a disability or disease during the course of their work, with the aim of allowing them to return to work or to a new job
- infantry fighting vehicle — a heavily armored combat vehicle, as a tank, used to carry infantry into battle and provide support. Abbreviation: IFV.
- initial teaching alphabet — a 44 letter phonetic alphabet used mainly in the 1960s for teaching children to read and write
- international match point — a unit of scoring in contract bridge tournaments held in Europe. Abbreviation: IMP.
- interstate highway system — a network of U.S. highways connecting the 48 contiguous states and most of the cities with populations above 50,000, begun in the 1950s and estimated to carry about a fifth of the nation's traffic.
- it is a good/bad thing to — You say it is a good thing to do something to introduce a piece of advice or a comment on a situation or activity.
- it's not simply/just that — You use it in expressions such as it's not that or it's not simply that when you are giving a reason for something and are suggesting that there are several other reasons.
- japanese flowering cherry — any of various ornamental hybrid cherry trees developed in Japan, having white or pink blossoms and inedible fruit.
- johnniac open shop system — (language) (JOSS) An early, simple, interactive calculator language developed by Charles L. Baker at Rand in 1964. There were two versions: JOSS I and JOSS II.
- joint technical committee — (standard, body) (JTC) A standards body straddling ISO and IEC.
- keep an ear to the ground — If you keep or have your ear to the ground, you make sure that you find out about the things that people are doing or saying.
- khakass autonomous region — an autonomous region in the Russian Federation, in S Siberia. 19,161 sq. mi. (49,627 sq. km). Capital: Abakan.
- land of the little sticks — the part of the north of Canada that lies south of the tree line but contains only stunted evergreens or dwarf deciduous trees.
- lead down the garden path — a plot of ground, usually near a house, where flowers, shrubs, vegetables, fruits, or herbs are cultivated.
- lie at (or on) the lurch — to lie in wait
- local education authority — a body that is responsible for education in a particular area
- magnetic character reader — a device that automatically scans and interprets characters printed with magnetic ink. It operates by the process of magnetic character recognition
- magnetohydromagnetic wave — Physics. Alfvén wave.
- maintenance of membership — an arrangement or agreement between an employer and a labor union by which employees who are members of the union at the time the agreement is made, or who subsequently join, must either remain members until the agreement expires, or be discharged.
- make a thing about/out of — If you make a thing of something or make a thing about it, you talk about it or do it in an exaggerated way, so that it seems much more important than it really is.
- massachusetts bay company — a company, chartered in England in 1629 to establish a colony on Massachusetts Bay, that founded Boston in 1630.
- massacre of the innocents — the slaughter of all the young male children of Bethlehem at Herod's command in an attempt to destroy Jesus (Matthew 2:16–18)
- melanesian pidgin english — Neo-Melanesian.
- metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1).
- methylrosaniline chloride — gentian violet.
- nail in the coffin of sth — If you say that one thing is a nail in the coffin of another thing, you mean that it will help bring about its end or failure.
- net positive suction head — The net positive suction head is a measure of a pump's performance.
- neurocirculatory asthenia — cardiac neurosis.
- never do things by halves — If you say that someone never does things by halves, you mean that they always do things very thoroughly.
- non-algorithmic procedure — heuristic