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24-letter words containing a, l, i, n, c

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • renewable term insurance — Renewable term insurance is term life insurance that may be renewed for another period without the policyholder needing to provide further evidence of their insurability.
  • resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
  • responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
  • revolving charge account — a charge plan offerring revolving credit.
  • richard the lion-hearted — ("Richard the Lion-Hearted"; "Richard Coeur de Lion") 1157–99, king of England 1189–99.
  • robot exclusion standard — standard for robot exclusion
  • sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
  • serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
  • 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.
  • skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
  • south equatorial current — an ocean current, flowing westward, found near the equator in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
  • 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.
  • special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
  • statistical independence — the condition or state of events or values of being statistically independent.
  • stratificational grammar — a grammar based upon the theory that language is made up of successive strata that are interconnected by established rules.
  • structural functionalism — functionalism (def 3).
  • teacher training college — a higher-education college that specializes in teacher training
  • 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 last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
  • the least i could/can do — You use expressions like 'that's the least that I can do' to mean that you are very willing to do it, or to acknowledge someone's thanks.
  • the second international — an international association of socialist parties and trade unions that began in Paris in 1889 and collapsed during World War I. The right-wing elements reassembled at Berne in 1919
  • 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 whole shooting match — everything; the whole lot
  • three-spined stickleback — a small teleost fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, of the family Gasterosteidae, of rivers and coastal regions, having three spines along the back and occurring in cold and temperate northern regions
  • to be in black and white — of an image, only using shades of black, white, and grey
  • to rise to the challenge — If someone rises to the challenge, they act in response to a difficult situation which is new to them and are successful.
  • transcendental aesthetic — (in Kantian epistemology) the study of space and time as the a priori forms of perception.
  • transcendental dialectic — (in transcendental logic) the study of the fallacious attribution of objective reality to the perceptions by the mind of external objects. Compare dialectic (def 8).
  • tricyclic antidepressant — pertaining to or embodying three cycles.
  • trip the light fantastic — a journey or voyage: to win a trip to Paris.
  • turks and caicos islands — a UK Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, southeast of the Bahamas: consists of the eight Turks Islands, separated by the Turks Island Passage from the Caicos group, which has six main islands. Capital: Grand Turk. Pop: 47 754 (2013 est). Area: 430 sq km (166 sq miles)
  • tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
  • uniform resource locater — Uniform Resource Locator
  • uniform resource locator — (web)   (URL, previously "Universal") A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. Other types of object are described below. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hypertext link which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer). Here are some example URLs: http://w3.org/default.html http://acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif http://foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator http://w3.org/default.html#Introduction ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz mailto:[email protected] news:alt.hypertext telnet://dra.com The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or protocol. Commonly implemented schemes include: ftp, http (web), gopher or WAIS. The "file" scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same host. Other less commonly used schemes include news, telnet or mailto (e-mail). The part after the colon is interpreted according to the access scheme. In general, two slashes after the colon introduce a hostname (host:port is also valid, or for FTP user:[email protected] or [email protected]). The port number is usually omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme, e.g. port 80 for HTTP. For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a pathname which is usually related to the pathname of a file on the server. The file can contain any type of data but only certain types are interpreted directly by most browsers. These include HTML and images in gif or jpeg format. The file's type is given by a MIME type in the HTTP headers returned by the server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also indicated by its filename extension. A file whose type is not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an external "viewer" application, e.g. a sound player. The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#". The later indicates a particular position within the specified document. Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are safe and may be transmitted unencoded. Other characters are encoded as a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. Space may also be encoded as "+". Standard SGML "&;" character entity encodings (e.g. "é") are also accepted when URLs are embedded in HTML. The terminating semicolon may be omitted if & is followed by a non-letter character.
  • universal life insurance — a type of insurance in which the payments of the insured are placed in an investment fund, earnings from which pay the premium on term life insurance while any remainder continues to increase the policy's value.
  • ventricular fibrillation — Pathology. a cardiac arrhythmia characterized by rapid, chaotic electrical impulses to the ventricles, incomplete ventricular contractions, and resultant loss of pulse and blood pressure.
  • visual component library — (programming)   VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
  • voluntary aid detachment — (in World War I) an organization of British women volunteers who assisted in military hospitals and ambulance duties
  • water of crystallization — water of hydration, formerly thought necessary to crystallization: now usually regarded as affecting crystallization only as it forms new molecular combinations.
  • which way the wind blows — air in natural motion, as that moving horizontally at any velocity along the earth's surface: A gentle wind blew through the valley. High winds were forecast.
  • win (or lose) by a neck — to win (or lose) by the length of a horse's head and neck
  • wired equivalent privacy — (networking, standard)   (WEP) IEEE 802.11:1999. A cryptographic privacy algorithm, based on the RC4 encryption engine, used to provide confidentiality for 802.11 wireless networks. WEP is intended to provide roughly the same level of confidentiality for wireless data as a wired LAN (Ethernet), which is NOT protected by encryption. WEP is often wrongly expanded as "Wireless Encryption Protocol". WEP is a protocol that provides encryption used on wireless networks but that's not what it stands for.
  • work/go/run like a charm — If you say that something worked like a charm, you mean that it was very effective or successful.
  • world boxing association — the international organization which regulates the sport of boxing
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