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19-letter words containing a, n, t, i, c

  • functional currency — Functional currency is the main currency used by a business.
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • functional language — (language)   A language that supports and encourages functional programming.
  • functional medicine — individualized medical care that recognizes the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and between the body's interconnected systems.
  • galactic coordinate — Usually, galactic coordinates. a member of a system of coordinates that define the position of a celestial body with reference to the Milky Way.
  • gas central heating — a system of central heating fuelled by combustible gas
  • gastrocolic omentum — the peritoneal fold attached to the stomach and the colon and hanging over the small intestine.
  • gastroenterocolitis — (medicine) inflammation of the stomach, small intestines, and colon.
  • gastroenterological — Of or pertaining to gastroenterology.
  • general anaesthetic — sth administered to induce unconsciousness
  • general linguistics — the study of the characteristics of language in general rather than of a particular language; theoretical, rather than applied, linguistics.
  • general post office — (in the U.S. postal system) the main post office of a city, county, etc., that also has branch post offices. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
  • genetic programming — (programming)   (GP) A programming technique which extends the genetic algorithm to the domain of whole computer programs. In GP, populations of programs are genetically bred to solve problems. Genetic programming can solve problems of system identification, classification, control, robotics, optimisation, game playing, and pattern recognition. Starting with a primordial ooze of hundreds or thousands of randomly created programs composed of functions and terminals appropriate to the problem, the population is progressively evolved over a series of generations by applying the operations of Darwinian fitness proportionate reproduction and crossover (sexual recombination).
  • geocentric parallax — the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer.
  • geomagnetic equator — an imaginary line on the earth's surface, the plane of which passes through the center and is midway between the geomagnetic poles.
  • gestational carrier — surrogate mother (def 3).
  • gigabits per second — (unit)   (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
  • glottochronological — Of or pertaining to glottochronology.
  • glyceryl trinitrate — nitroglycerin.
  • go to rack and ruin — If you say that a place is going to rack and ruin, you are emphasizing that it is slowly becoming less attractive or less pleasant because no-one is bothering to look after it.
  • grammatical meaning — the meaning of an inflectional morpheme or of some other syntactic device, as word order.
  • grandfather's chair — wing chair.
  • graphic workstation — (graphics, computer)   A workstation specifically configured for graphics works such as image manipulation, bitmap graphics ("paint"), and vector graphics ("draw") type applications. Such work requires a powerful CPU and a high resolution display. A graphic workstation is very similar to a CAD workstation and, given the typical specifications of personal computers currently available in 1999, the distinctions are very blurred and are more likely to depend on availability of specific software than any detailed hardware requirements.
  • gratuitous contract — a contract for the benefit of only one of the parties, the other party receiving nothing as consideration.
  • great wall of china — a system of fortified walls with a roadway along the top, constructed as a defense for China against the nomads of the regions that are now Mongolia and Manchuria: completed in the 3rd century b.c., but later repeatedly modified and rebuilt. 2000 miles (3220 km) long.
  • great-grandchildren — a grandchild of one's son or daughter.
  • greenstick fracture — an incomplete fracture of a long bone, in which one side is broken and the other side is still intact.
  • greenwich mean time — the time as measured on the prime meridian running through Greenwich, England: used in England and as a standard of calculation elsewhere.
  • gregorian telescope — a telescope similar in design to the Cassegrainian telescope but less widely used.
  • grievance committee — a group of representatives chosen from a labor union or from both labor and management to consider and remedy workers' grievances.
  • gulf of carpentaria — a shallow inlet of the Arafura Sea, in N Australia between Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula
  • halt and catch fire — (humour, processor)   (HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to read every memory location sequentially until reset.
  • hang in the balance — to fasten or attach (a thing) so that it is supported only from above or at a point near its own top; suspend.
  • harmonic distortion — distortion caused by nonlinear characteristics of electronic apparatus, esp of audio amplifiers, that generate unwanted harmonics of the input frequencies
  • have a bone to pick — to have grounds for a quarrel
  • heel-and-toe racing — race walking.
  • hepatic portal vein — a vein connecting two capillary networks in the liver
  • heptachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twenty-four isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing seven chlorine atoms.
  • hermitian conjugate — adjoint (def 2).
  • holy innocents' day — December 28, a day of religious observance commemorating the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by Herod's order.
  • horizontal encoding — (processor)   An instruction set where each field (a bit or group of bits) in an instruction word controls some functional unit or gate directly, as opposed to vertical encoding where instruction fields are decoded (by hard-wired logic or microcode) to produce the control signals. Horizontal encoding allows all possible combinations of control signals (and therefore operations) to be expressed as instructions whereas vertical encoding uses a shorter instruction word but can only encode those combinations of operations built into the decoding logic. An instruction set may use a mixture of horizontal and vertical encoding within each instruction. Because an architecture using horizontal encoding typically requires more instruction word bits it is sometimes known as a very long instruction word (VLIW) architecture.
  • hotel accommodation — the facilities and the quality of accommodation provided by a hotel
  • housing association — A housing association is an organization which owns houses and helps its members to rent or buy them more cheaply than on the open market.
  • human rights record — the facts that are known about the tendency of a country, regime, etc, to observe and protect human rights
  • humanist technology — (philosophy)   Technology centered around the interests, needs, and well-being of humans.
  • huntington's chorea — a hereditary disease of the central nervous system characterized by brain deterioration and loss of control over voluntary movements, the symptoms usually appearing in the fourth decade of life.
  • hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
  • hyper-nationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
  • hyperbolic cosecant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of hyperbolic sine
  • hyperfocal distance — the distance, at a given f number, between a camera lens and the nearest point (hyperfocal point) having satisfactory definition when focused at infinity.
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