0%

19-letter words containing a, p, r, i, o

  • be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
  • beauty preparations — the cosmetics, creams etc used to improve someone's beauty
  • benefit performance — a theatrical or musical performance in aid of charity
  • bill of particulars — an itemized statement of claims or counterclaims provided to the opposing party of a lawsuit
  • binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
  • binomial experiment — an experiment consisting of a fixed number of independent trials each with two possible outcomes, success and failure, and the same probability of success. The probability of a given number of successes is described by a binominal distribution
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • blind carbon (copy) — a carbon copy of a letter sent to someone other than the addressee, with no indication on the original letter that such a copy has been sent
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • california fan palm — a tall fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, of California, having a shaggy skirt of withered leaves near the top of the trunk.
  • campernelle jonquil — a narcissus, Narcissus odorus, of the amaryllis family, having clusters of two to four fragrant yellow flowers.
  • cape york peninsula — large peninsula in NE Australia, part of Queensland, between the Gulf of Carpentaria & the Coral Sea
  • captain abstraction — The champion of the principles of abstraction and modularity, who protects unwary students on MIT's course 6.001 from the nefarious designs of Sergeant Spaghetticode and his vile concrete programming practices. See also spaghetti code.
  • captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
  • captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
  • carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
  • caterpillar tractor — a tractor powered by a Caterpillar track
  • cathodic protection — a technique for protecting metal structures, such as steel ships and pipelines, from electrolytic corrosion by making the structure the cathode in a cell, either by applying an electromotive force directly or by putting it into contact with a more electropositive metal
  • cerebrospinal fluid — the clear colourless fluid in the spaces inside and around the spinal cord and brain
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • chemical processing — Chemical processing is a way of making changes to chemical compounds.
  • chemolithoautotroph — (biology) A chemoautotroph or lithoautotroph.
  • chlorobromide paper — a relatively fast printing paper coated with an emulsion of silver chloride and silver bromide.
  • chloroplatinic acid — a red-brown, crystalline, water-soluble solid, H 2 PtCl 6 ⋅6H 2 O, used chiefly in platinizing glass, metals, and ceramic ware.
  • christmas pantomime — pantomime (def 5).
  • chromatographically — With regard to, or by by using chromatography.
  • cinematographically — a motion-picture projector.
  • clinical depression — depression in a patient that meets defined criteria and that is deemed to merit treatment
  • colonial experience — experience of farming, etc, gained by a young Englishman in colonial Australia
  • columnar epithelium — epithelium consisting of one or more layers of elongated cells of cylindrical or prismatic shape.
  • combination therapy — a therapy that combines two or more drugs, or two or more treatments
  • command interpreter — (operating system)   A program which reads textual commands from the user or from a file and executes them. Some commands may be executed directly within the interpreter itself (e.g. setting variables or control constructs), others may cause it to load and execute other files. When an IBM PC is booted BIOS loads and runs the MS-DOS command interpreter into memory from file COMMAND.COM found on a floppy disk or hard disk drive. The commands that COMMAND.COM recognizes (e.g. COPY, DIR, PRN) are called internal commands, in contrast to external commands which are executable files.
  • communications port — (hardware, communications)   A connector for a communications interface, usually, a serial port.
  • community programme — (in Britain) a former government scheme to provide temporary work for people unemployed for over a year
  • compact disc player — a machine for playing compact discs
  • compact disc writer — (storage)   (CD burner) A device that can write data to Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R) or Compact Disc Rewritable (CD-RW) discs. Now both these CD formats are often combined with a DVD writer.
  • compact disk player — a device for playing compact disks.
  • comparison shopping — Comparison shopping is comparing similar products from different stores or suppliers. Comparison shopping services are popular on the Internet.
  • complimentary close — the part of a letter that by convention immediately precedes the signature, as “Very truly yours,” “Cordially,” or “Sincerely yours.”.
  • computer dictionary — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
  • computer peripheral — a device that is attached to and controlled by a computer, such as a scanner, printer, or external hard drive
  • computer simulation — an event, process, or scenario that is created on a computer
  • confocal microscope — a light microscope with an optical system designed to reject background from matter outside the focal plane and therefore allowing images of different sections of a specimen to be obtained
  • consultation period — a period during which consultations are held before a policy decision is made
  • container transport — the transport of cargo in containers
  • contemplative order — a religious order whose members are devoted to prayer rather than works.
  • conversational lisp — (language)   (CLISP) A mixed English-like, ALGOL-like surface syntax for Interlisp.
  • cooperative society — a commercial enterprise owned and managed by and for the benefit of customers or workers
  • corporal punishment — Corporal punishment is the punishment of people by hitting them.
  • corporate venturing — the provision of venture capital by one company for another in order to obtain information about the company requiring capital or as a step towards acquiring it
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?