20-letter words containing a, r, e, p, t
- feather in one's cap — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- file descriptor leak — (programming) (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
- first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
- fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
- fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
- flat-plate collector — a type of solar collector consisting of a series of flat glass or plastic plates with black metal surfaces that absorb solar energy.
- fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
- fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
- forty-ninth parallel — an informal name for the Canadian border with the USA, which is in part delineated by the parallel line of latitude at 49°N
- free-range parenting — Informal. a style of child rearing in which parents allow their children to move about without constant adult supervision, aimed at instilling independence and self-reliance.
- freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
- freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
- frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
- fundamental particle — elementary particle.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
- general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
- generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware) Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
- group representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of interests rather than by geographical location.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
- heat of vaporization — the heat absorbed per unit mass of a given material at its boiling point that completely converts the material to a gas at the same temperature: equal to the heat of condensation.
- helicopter parenting — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
- heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
- high-energy particle — Physics
- hipparchus satellite — an astronometric satellite launched in 1989 by the European Space Agency that measured the position, proper motion, and brightness of 118 218 stars down to 12th magnitude and the magnitude and colour of a million stars down to 10th magnitude
- hire-purchase system — a system of payment for a commodity in regular installments while using it.
- holy water sprinkler — morning star (def 2).
- horizontally opposed — A horizontally opposed engine has the cylinders set horizontally at either side of the crankshaft.
- houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
- human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
- hypercholesterolemia — the presence of an excessive amount of cholesterol in the blood.
- hyperhomocysteinemia — (medicine) The presence of an excessive amount of homocysteine in the blood.
- hyperlipoproteinemia — Pathology. any of various disorders of lipoprotein metabolism, usually characterized by abnormally high levels of cholesterol and certain lipoproteins in the blood.
- implicit parallelism — (parallel) A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which decides automatically which parts to run in parallel. The best way of providing implicit parallelism is still (1995) an active research topic. The problem is to generate the right number of parallel tasks of the right size (or "granularity"). Too many tasks and the system gets bogged down in house-keeping, or memory for waiting tasks runs out, too few tasks and processors are left idle. The best performance is usually achieved with explicit parallelism where the programmer can annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks.
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in the lap of luxury — If you say that someone lives in the lap of luxury, you mean that they live in conditions of great comfort and wealth.
- income tax inspector — a person whose job is to assess individuals' income tax liability
- incorporated company — a legally constituted company
- independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
- indicated horsepower — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
- inertial upper stage — a U.S. two-stage, solid-propellant rocket used to boost a relatively heavy spacecraft from a low earth orbit into a planetary trajectory or an elliptical transfer orbit. Abbreviation: IUS.