21-letter words containing a, n, t, i, l, p
- multiplication factor — the ratio of the number of neutrons in a generation to the number of neutrons in the previous generation: when the multiplication factor is equal to or greater than one, a chain reaction is possible
- municipal corporation — a city, town, village, etc., that operates under a corporate charter granted by the state.
- national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
- national public radio — a nationwide network of nonprofit radio stations supported in part by U.S. government funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, often affiliated with a public television station or educational institution. Abbreviation: NPR.
- naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
- non-maintainer upload — (operating system) (NMU) A release of a Debian package by someone other than its usual maintainer. E.g. "The bug was fixed in a recent NMU."
- non-repeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- nonproportional cover — Nonproportional cover is reinsurance cover such as excess of loss reinsurance where the reinsurer's liability is not calculated as a proportion of the insurance.
- nothing in particular — not anything specific
- nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
- occupational guidance — advice and guidance relating to employment issues and career choices
- old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- olympic national park — a national park in NW Washington. 1323 sq. mi. (3425 sq. km).
- open trading protocol — Internet Open Trading Protocol
- operational amplifier — a high-gain, high-input impedance amplifier, usually an integrated circuit, that can perform mathematical operations when suitably wired.
- operational semantics — (theory) A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
- ophthalmia neonatorum — inflammation of the eyes of a newborn child due to an infectious disease, as gonorrhea, contracted during birth from the infected mother.
- orthogonal projection — a two-dimensional graphic representation of an object in which the projecting lines are at right angles to the plane of the projection. Also called orthogonal projection. Compare isometric (def 5).
- paradoxical intention — (in psychotherapy) the deliberate practice of a neurotic habit or thought, undertaken in order to remove it
- parasitic oscillation — (in an electronic circuit) oscillation at any undesired frequency
- parliamentary inquiry — a question asked of the presiding officer of a parliament in relation to parliamentary law
- partial reinforcement — the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it
- peephole optimisation — (compiler) A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
- peephole optimization — peephole optimisation
- pentamethylenediamine — cadaverine.
- personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
- physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
- pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
- place of articulation — the location at which two speech organs approach or come together in producing a speech sound, as in the contact of the tongue and the teeth to form a dental sound. Also called point of articulation. Compare articulator (def 2).
- plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
- play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
- point of articulation — place of articulation.
- political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
- politically incorrect — not politically correct; potentially offensive to a particular group of people: politically incorrect jokes.
- polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
- poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
- premature ejaculation — a male psychosexual disorder in which ejaculation occurs soon after the commencement of sexual intercourse.
- prince rupert's metal — a brass composed of from about 60 to 85 percent copper and about 15 to 40 percent zinc, used to imitate gold.
- pro-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
- propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
- protective coloration — coloration or anything likened to it that eliminates or reduces visibility or conspicuousness.
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public transportation — means of fare-paying travel
- pulmonary circulation — the circulation of blood from the heart to the lungs for oxygenation and back to the heart.
- pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
- pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
- pulse-code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
- pulse-time modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier is modulated to produce a series of pulses timed to transmit the amplitude and pitch of a signal. Abbr.: PTM.
- put sb in their place — If you put someone in their place, you show them that they are less important or clever than they think they are.