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24-letter words containing a, n, y

  • m technology association — (body)   The MUMPS User's Group that disbanded some time between 1995 and 2003. Address: 1738 Elton Road, Suite 205, Silver Spring, MD 20903-1725, USA. Telephone: +1 301 431-4070. Fax: +1 301 431-0017.
  • magnetothermoelectricity — thermoelectricity induced or affected by a magnetic field.
  • mandy rice-davis applies — (chat)   (MRDA) An acronym used to imply that someone is lying to protect their own interests. During the trial of Stephen Ward (who was charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Rice-Davies), the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied any involvement with her and Rice-Davies replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"
  • 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.
  • minister plenipotentiary — plenipotentiary.
  • money-market certificate — a certificate of deposit held for a specified term earning a fixed interest rate keyed to the interest rate of U.S. Treasury bills.
  • motorway service station — an establishment off a motorway where drivers can refuel their vehicles, buy food, drink, etc
  • mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
  • nalbuphine hydrochloride — an opiate drug used as a painkiller
  • narcissistic personality — a personality disorder characterized by extreme self-centeredness and self-absorption, fantasies involving unrealistic goals, an excessive need for attention and admiration, and disturbed interpersonal relationships.
  • network operating system — (operating system)   (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
  • neutrosophic probability — (logic)   An extended form of probability based on Neutrosophy, in which a statement is held to be t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F or the sum n=t+i+f.
  • non-proliferation treaty — an international agreement signed in 1968 which aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons
  • not ready for prime time — Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only. Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be made more solid Real Soon Now. This term comes from the ensemble name of the original cast of "Saturday Night Live", the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players". It has extra flavour for hackers because of the special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time. Compare beta.
  • object management system — In an IPSE, the system which maintains information about the system under development.
  • object-oriented analysis — (programming)   (OOA) The first phase of object-oriented design.
  • open system architecture — (operating system)   (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
  • 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.
  • people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
  • permeability coefficient — the volume of an incompressible fluid that will flow in unit time through a unit cube of a porous substance across which a unit pressure difference is maintained
  • polychlorinated biphenyl — PCB.
  • preparatory to doing sth — If one action is done preparatory to another, it is done before the other action, usually as preparation for it.
  • present company excepted — If you are making a general, unfavourable comment about a particular type of person, and you are with people of that type, you can say 'present company excepted' as a way of making your comment sound more polite.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • probability distribution — a distribution of all possible values of a random variable together with an indication of their probabilities.
  • psychopathic personality — an antisocial personality characterized by the failure to develop any sense of moral responsibility and the capability of performing violent or antisocial acts
  • quick-assembly furniture — furniture such as shelves and cupboards which you buy as a number of separate pieces and assemble yourself
  • quinacrine hydrochloride — Atabrine
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • repetitive strain injury — overuse strain injury
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
  • 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.
  • ricardian theory of rent — economic rent.
  • rocky mountain whitefish — mountain whitefish.
  • saint ignatius of loyola — Saint Ignatius of (Iñigo López de Loyola) 1491–1556, Spanish soldier and ecclesiastic: founder of the Society of Jesus.
  • san joaquin valley fever — coccidioidomycosis.
  • scottish country dancing — a type of Scottish folk dancing, including reels, jigs, and strathspeys, in which couples are arranged in sets and perform a series of movements, esp facing one another in a line
  • secondary school teacher — a person who teaches at a secondary school
  • sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
  • shadow foreign secretary — the member of the main opposition party in Parliament who would hold the office of Foreign Secretary if their party were in power
  • single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
  • staggered pin grid array — (hardware)   (SPGA) A style of integrated circuit socket or pin-out with a staggered grid of pins around the edge of the socket, positioned as several squares, one inside the other. SPGA is commonly used on motherboards for processors, e.g. Socket 5, Socket 7 and Socket 8. See also PGA.
  • steak and kidney pudding — beefsteak and kidney in a suet pastry crust, steamed in a basin.
  • synchronous graphics ram — Synchronous Graphics Random Access Memory
  • system management server — (operating system)   (SMS) Software used by Microsoft Windows NT system administrators to manage personal computers on any size network. SMS can distribute software to desktops from one central location, detect every machine on the network, track software and hardware configurations, send key information back to a central database, and perform other tasks.
  • 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).
  • that goes without saying — that is self-evident
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