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24-letter words containing a, n, t, i, v, e

  • low voltage differential — (hardware)   (LVD) A method of driving SCSI cables that will be formalised in the SCSI-3 specifications. LVD uses less power than the current differential drive (HVD), is less expensive and will allow the higher speeds of Ultra-2 SCSI. LVD requires 3.3 Volts DC instead of 5 Volts DC for HVD.
  • master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
  • motorway service station — an establishment off a motorway where drivers can refuel their vehicles, buy food, drink, etc
  • multiple-valued function — function (def 4b).
  • national weather service — an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is responsible for meteorological observations, weather forecasts, storm and flood warnings, etc.
  • 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.
  • not to have the foggiest — to have no idea whatsoever
  • parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool)   (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
  • 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.
  • passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
  • 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.
  • private health insurance — insurance against the need for medical treatment as a private patient
  • privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
  • 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.
  • progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
  • public access television — television in which local producers or individuals can participate
  • public-access television — a noncommercial system of broadcasting on television channels made available to independent or community groups for programs of general interest to the community.
  • punch above one's weight — to do something that is considered to be beyond one's ability
  • quantitative inheritance — the process in which the additive action of numerous genes results in a trait, as height, showing continuous variability.
  • rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
  • rational-emotive therapy — a form of therapy in which a patient is asked to reject irrational attitudes and assumptions in order to deal effectively with stressful situations.
  • recursive descent parser — (grammar)   A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
  • remote method invocation — (programming)   (RMI) Part of the Java programming language library which enables a Java program running on one computer to access the objects and methods of another Java program running on a different computer.
  • repetitive strain injury — overuse strain injury
  • repondez s'il vous plait — Répondez s'il vous plait
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
  • reverse annuity mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
  • revised standard version — a revision of the Bible, based on the American Standard Version and the King James Version, prepared by American scholars, published in its completed form in 1952. Abbreviation: RSV.
  • revolving charge account — a charge plan offerring revolving credit.
  • 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
  • special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
  • 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.
  • st.-bruno-de-montarville — a town in S Quebec, in E Canada, near Montreal.
  • text encoding initiative — (text, project, standard)   (TEI) A project working to establish a standard for interchanging electronic text for scholarly research. The TEI has adopted SGML and implemented the TEI standard as an SGML Document Type Definition. The TEI was incorporated as a not-for-profit consortium in December 2000, with host sites in Bergen, Oxford, Virginia, and Providence RI, USA. See also Corpus Processing.
  • the ravages of something — the destructive effects of something
  • 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.
  • to have it in mind to do — If you have it in mind to do something, you intend or want to do it.
  • to have to hand it to sb — You say things such as 'You have to hand it to her' or 'You've got to hand it to them' when you admire someone for their skills or achievements and you think they deserve a lot of praise.
  • 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.
  • twin vector quantization — (audio, compression)   (VQF) Part of the MPEG-4 standard dealing with time domain weighted interleaved vector quantization.
  • van allen radiation belt — a broad, doughnut-shaped region surrounding the earth and composed of high-energy electrons and protons trapped in the earth's magnetic field at heights between c. 400 km (c. 250 mi) and c. 64,370 km (c. 40,000 mi)
  • vaporization temperature — Vaporization temperature is the temperature at which liquid is converted into vapor without any change in temperature.
  • variable (interest) rate — an interest rate that varies in relation to fluctuations in the market rates of interest, as over the time period of a loan or mortgage
  • 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.
  • veterans of foreign wars — an organization of U.S. veterans who have served in foreign wars: founded in 1899
  • video cassette recording — a recording made using a tape recorder for vision and sound signals using magnetic tape in closed plastic cassettes: used for recording and playing back television programmes and films
  • vienna definition method — Vienna Development Method
  • virtual home environment — (VHE) A tool for using NFS on HP UX.
  • virtual storage extended — (operating system)   (VSE, formerly DOS/VSE) is a multitasking, IBM 370-architected operating system similar to Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS). VSE run jobs in partitions rather than address spaces, and uses POWER for input/output rather than JES, but is largely similar to MVS. Subsequent VSE/ESA releases gave VSE the XA-370 channel architecture, 31-bit virtual and real storage support, and data spaces. VSE is the IBM operating system on one-third of installed IBM 4381s and a significant proportion of IBM 9370s as well. It offers transaction processing and batch processing capabilities well beyond Virtual Machine's current capabilities, and has a close affinity with MVS.
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