26-letter words containing a, r, o, n, s
- national progressive party — Progressive party (def 1).
- national rifle association — a lobbying organization which advocates the right to own and use firearms
- nature conservancy council — (in Britain) a body set up by act of parliament in 1973 to establish and manage nature reserves, identify SSSIs, and provide information and advice about nature conservation. In 1991–92 it was replaced by English Nature, Scottish Natural Heritage, and the Countryside Council for Wales
- neither more nor less than — simply
- netware directory services — (networking) (NDS) Novell, Inc.'s directory services for Netware, Windows NT, and Unix. The NDS directory represents each network resource (user, hardware, or application) as an object of a certain class, where each class has certain properties. For example, User and Print Server are object classes and a user has over 80 properties such as name, login, password, department, and title. The directory is hierarchical, divided into branches by rules of containment. A given object can only belong to a given container (or branch). The rules governing classes, properties and, rules of containment are known as the schema.
- network address translator — Network Address Translation
- network information system — (spelling) A mis-expansion of NIS.
- new business profit margin — A new business profit margin is a system used by insurers to measure the cost of and profit from writing new policies.
- new york state barge canal — a New York State waterway system. 575 miles (925 km) long.
- newfoundland standard time — one of the standard times used in Canada, three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- nondeterministic automaton — (theory) (Or "probabilistic automaton") An automaton in which there are several possible actions (outputs and next states) at each state of the computation such that the overall course of the computation is not completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. See also nondeterministic Turing Machine.
- not get a word in edgeways — If you say that you cannot get a word in edgeways, you are complaining that you do not have the opportunity to speak because someone else is talking so much.
- not get a word in edgewise — If you say that you cannot get a word in edgewise, you are complaining that you do not have the opportunity to speak because someone else is talking so much.
- not know someone from adam — to have no knowledge of or acquaintance with someone
- nuclear magnetic resonance — the selective absorption of electromagnetic radiation by an atomic nucleus in the presence of a strong, static, magnetic field: used in research and in medicine to monitor tissue metabolism and to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells. Abbreviation: NMR.
- object constraint language — (language) (OCL) A formal specification language extension to UML. The Object Constraint Language is a precise text language that provides constraint and object query expressions on an object-oriented model that cannot otherwise be expressed by diagrammatic notation. OCL supplements UML by providing expressions that have neither the ambiguities of natural language nor the inherent difficulty of using complex mathematics. OCL is a descendent of Syntropy, a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions.
- official production system — (language) (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
- on demand: usu phr after v — If something is available or happens on demand, you can have it or it happens whenever you want it or ask for it.
- on the straight and narrow — If something keeps people on the straight and narrow, it helps to keep them living an honest or healthy life.
- or otherwise/and otherwise — You use or otherwise or and otherwise to mention something that is not the thing just referred to or is the opposite of that thing.
- orbiting solar observatory — OSO.
- organophosphorus-compounds — Biochemistry. any of a variety of organic compounds that contain phosphorus and often have intense neurotoxic activity: originally developed as nerve gases, now widely used as insecticides and fire retardants.
- orthogonal instruction set — (architecture) An instruction set where all (or most) instructions have the same format and all registers and addressing modes can be used interchangeably - the choices of op code, register, and addressing mode are mutually independent (loosely speaking, the choices are "orthogonal"). This contrasts with some early Intel microprocessors where only certain registers could be used by certain instructions. Examples include the PDP-11, 680x0, ARM, VAX.
- paraconsistent probability — (logic) A notion introduced by Florentin Smarandache: The probability (T, I, F) that an event occurs is calculated from different sources which may be contradictory or may overlap information; here T, I, F are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T)+sup(I)+sup(F) > 100. See neutrosophic probability
- parent teacher association — an organization of teachers and the parents of their students, as within a public school, to promote mutual understanding and to increase the effectiveness of the educational program. Abbreviation: PTA, P.T.A.
- parent-teacher association — an organization of teachers and the parents of their students, as within a public school, to promote mutual understanding and to increase the effectiveness of the educational program. Abbreviation: PTA, P.T.A.
- people's republic of china — People's Republic of, a country in E Asia. 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). Capital: Beijing.
- period-luminosity relation — the relationship between the period of light variation and of the absolute magnitude of Cepheid variable stars.
- personal digital assistant — a handheld computer, often pen-based, that provides especially organizational software, as an appointment calendar, and communications hardware, as a fax modem. Abbreviation: PDA.
- philosophical anthropology — anthropology (def 4).
- philosophical-anthropology — the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind.
- physical transport network — (communications) (PTN) The actual hardware through which data transfer devices are connected.
- physics analysis workbench — (tool) (PAW) A general purpose portable tool for analysis and presentation of physics data.
- post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
- postprandial thermogenesis — the rate at which food is broken down after a meal and used by your body
- pour encourager les autres — in order to encourage the others: often used ironically
- professional office system — (messaging) (PROFS) An office messaging system from IBM, used worldwide, mainly on IBM mainframes.
- provence-alpes-côte d'azur — metropolitan region of SE France: 12,124 sq mi (31,401 sq km); pop. 4,258,000; chief city, Marseille
- public-service corporation — a private or quasi-private corporation chartered to provide an essential commodity or service to the public.
- put a bug in someone's ear — Also called true bug, hemipteran, hemipteron. a hemipterous insect.
- put one's signature to sth — If you put your signature to a document, you sign it as a way of officially showing that you agree with what is written.
- quite apart from something — used to indicate that you are aware of one aspect of a situation, but that you are going to focus on another aspect
- real-time operating system — (operating system) (RTOS) Any operating system where interrupts are guaranteed to be handled within a certain specified maximum time, thereby making it suitable for control of hardware in embedded systems and other time-critical applications. RTOS is not a specific product but a class of operating systems.
- record management services — (operating system) (RMS) Procedures in the VMS operating system that programs call to process files and records within files. RMS allows programs to issue GET and PUT requests at the record level (record I/O) as well as read and write blocks (block I/O). VMS RMS is an integral part of the system software; its procedures run in executive mode.
- red-backed squirrel monkey — a related species, Saimiri oerstedi, of Central America, having a reddish coat and dark brown limbs
- remembrance of things past — a novel (1913–27) by Marcel Proust.
- repetitive strain disorder — overuse strain injury
- replacement cost insurance — Replacement cost insurance is insurance in which the cost of replacing property is calculated without a reduction for depreciation.
- resistance transfer factor — R factor.
- reticuloendothelial system — the aggregate of the phagocytic cells, including certain cells of the bone marrow, lymphatic system, liver, and spleen, that have reticular and endothelial characteristics and function in the immune system's defense against foreign bodies. Abbreviation: RES.