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24-letter words containing a, l, i, g

  • mass psychogenic illness — a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to psychological factors rather than environmental or physiological factors.
  • medium-scale integration — MSI.
  • meteorological satellite — an artificial satellite that gathers data concerning the earth's atmosphere and surface in order to aid meteorologists in understanding weather patterns and producing weather forecasts.
  • michael viii palaeologus — 1234–1282, Byzantine ruler 1259–82, first of the Palaeologus emperors.
  • multiple virtual storage — (operating system)   (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
  • negative acknowledgement — 1.   (character)   (NAK) The mnemonic for ASCII character 21. Sometimes used as the response to receipt of a corrupted packet of information. Opposite of acknowledgement. 2.   (communications)   (NAK) Any message transmitted to indicate that some data has been received incorrectly, for example it may have a checksum or message length error. A NAK message allows the sender to distinguish a message which has been received in a corrupted state from one which is not received at all. An alternative is to use only ACK messages, in which case the non-receipt of an ACK after a certain time is counted as a NAK but gives no information about the integrity of the communications channel. See also ACK.
  • new programming language — (language)   (NEWP) A language which replaced ESPOL on the Burroughs Large System.
  • nongonococcal urethritis — a widespread sexually transmitted infection of the urethra, caused by the parasite Chlamydia trachomatis, or the mycoplasm Ureaplasma urealyticum, characterized in males by painful urination and discharge from the penis and in females by frequent, painful urination and cervical erosion. Abbreviation: NGU.
  • object-oriented language — object-oriented programming
  • one thing led to another — You say one thing led to another when you are explaining how something happened, but you do not really want to give the details or you think people will be able to imagine the details.
  • optical signal processor — optical computing
  • orbital angular momentum — the component of angular momentum of an electron in an atom or a nucleon in a nucleus, arising from its orbital motion rather than from its spin.
  • other things being equal — If you say 'other things being equal' or 'all things being equal' when talking about a possible situation, you mean if nothing unexpected happens or if there are no other factors which affect the situation.
  • parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
  • parliamentary government — government by a body of cabinet ministers who are chosen from and responsible to the legislature and act as advisers to a nominal chief of state.
  • physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
  • physiological psychology — the branch of psychology concerned with the relationship between the physical functioning of an organism and its behavior.
  • plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
  • pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel)   A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.
  • privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
  • professional programming — paranoid programming
  • 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.
  • programmable array logic — (hardware)   (PAL) A family of fuse-programmable logic integrated circuits originally developed by MMI. Registered or combinatorial output functions are modelled in a sum of products form. Each output is a sum (logical or) of a fixed number of products (logical and) of the input signals. This structure is well suited for automatic generation of programming patterns by logic compilers. PAL devices are programmed by blowing the fuses permanently using overvoltage. Today, more complex devices based on the same original architecture are available (CPLD's for Complex PLD's) that incorporate the equivalent of several original PAL chips. PAL chips are, however, still popular due to their high speed.
  • progressive assimilation — assimilation in which a preceding sound has an effect on a following one, as in shortening captain to cap'm rather than cap'n.
  • pure functional language — purely functional language
  • registered general nurse — (in Britain) a nurse who has completed a three-year training course in all aspects of nursing care to enable him or her to be registered with the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery, and Health Visiting
  • regular checking account — a checking account for which the monthly fee is usually based on the average balance maintained and the number of transactions recorded.
  • revolving charge account — a charge plan offerring revolving credit.
  • saint ignatius of loyola — Saint Ignatius of (Iñigo López de Loyola) 1491–1556, Spanish soldier and ecclesiastic: founder of the Society of Jesus.
  • scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web)   A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
  • self-extensible language — ["SEL - A Self-Extensible Programming Language", G. Molnar, Computer J 14(3):238-242 (Aug 1971)].
  • sic transit gloria mundi — thus passes the glory of the world
  • single connection attach — (hardware)   (SCA, "Single Connector Attachment") A non-standard type of SCSI connector, used mostly by OEMs, which carries both power and data on one 80-pin connector. SCA SCSI drives tend to be cheaper but use with standard SCSI cables requires an adaptor and external termination.
  • single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
  • single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
  • 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
  • solution based modelling — (SBM) A software development process described in the book "Developing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh" written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, published by Addison Wesley in 1992.
  • special checking account — a checking account that requires no minimum balance but in which a small charge is made for each check issued or drawn and for monthly maintenance.
  • 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.
  • st. kitts-nevis-anguilla — a former British colony (1967–71) in the Leeward Islands, in the E West Indies: comprising St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, and adjacent small islands: a member of the former West Indies Associated States.
  • stand in one's own light — to harm one's reputation by acting unwisely
  • sth bodes ill/augurs ill — If something bodes ill or augurs ill, it gives you a reason to fear that something harmful might happen soon.
  • stratificational grammar — a grammar based upon the theory that language is made up of successive strata that are interconnected by established rules.
  • 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 the king's shilling — to enlist in the army
  • teacher training college — a higher-education college that specializes in teacher training
  • the whole shooting match — everything; the whole lot
  • thousand island dressing — a seasoned mayonnaise, often containing chopped pickles, pimientos, sweet peppers, hard-boiled eggs, etc.
  • to fight a losing battle — If you are fighting a losing battle, you are trying to achieve something but are not going to be successful.
  • to lay something to rest — If you lay something such as fears or rumours to rest or if you put them to rest, you succeed in proving that they are not true.
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