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20-letter words containing a, t, r, i, l

  • historical sociology — the sociological study of the origins and development of societies and of other social phenomena that seeks underlying laws and principles.
  • holy water sprinkler — morning star (def 2).
  • horizontal microcode — (processor)   Microcode using horizontal encoding.
  • horizontal scan rate — (hardware)   (HSR) The measure of how many scan lines of pixels a monitor can display in one second, expressed in kHz (generally somewhere between 20 and 100 kHz). The HSR is controlled by the horizontal sync signal generated by the video controller, but is limited by the speed with which the monitor can scan the electron beam horizontally across the screen and then return it to the beginning of the next line.
  • horizontally opposed — A horizontally opposed engine has the cylinders set horizontally at either side of the crankshaft.
  • hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
  • 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.
  • hydraulic fracturing — a process in which fractures in rocks below the earth's surface are opened and widened by injecting chemicals and liquids at high pressure: used especially to extract natural gas or oil.
  • hydrodesulfurization — desulfurization by catalytic agents of the sulfur-rich hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum or the like during cracking or hydrocracking.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • in (or out of) play — in (or not in) the condition for continuing play
  • in flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
  • 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.
  • incremental analysis — (testing)   Partial analysis of an incomplete product to allow early feedback on its development.
  • incremental recorder — a device for recording data as it is generated, usually on paper tape or magnetic tape, and feeding it into a computer
  • 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).
  • industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
  • industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
  • industrial insurance — industrial life insurance.
  • industrial relations — (used with a plural verb) the dealings or relations of an industrial concern with its employees, with labor in general, with the public, etc.
  • industrial sociology — the sociological study of social relationships and social structures in business settings.
  • inelastic scattering — a scattering of particles due to an inelastic collision that also changes their wavelengths and phases.
  • 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.
  • infiltration gallery — a conduit, built in permeable earth, for collecting ground water.
  • information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
  • information overload — an excess of incoming information, as might confront a pedestrian on a crowded city street, that forces one to be selective in the information received and retained.
  • initial program load — (operating system)   (IPL) The procedure used to (re-)start a computer system by copying the operating system kernel into main memory and running it. Part of the boot sequence.
  • inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
  • insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
  • intelligent terminal — (hardware)   (or "smart terminal", "programmable terminal") A terminal that often contains not only a keyboard and screen, but also comes with a disk drive and printer, so it can perform limited processing tasks when not communicating directly with the central computer. Some can be programmed by the user to perform many basic tasks, including both arithmetic and logic operations. In some cases, when the user enters data, the data will be checked for errors and some type of report will be produced. In addition, the valid data that is entered may be stored on the disk, it will be transmitted over communication lines to the central computer. An intelligent terminal may have enough computing capability to draw graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behaviour of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using said devices as displays. The term once meant any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned above, is called a dumb terminal. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate". This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. Compare hook.
  • intercalary meristem — meristem in the internode of a stem.
  • internal hemorrhoids — Usually, hemorrhoids. Pathology. an abnormally enlarged vein mainly due to a persistent increase in venous pressure, occurring inside the anal sphincter of the rectum and beneath the mucous membrane (internal hemorrhoid) or outside the anal sphincter and beneath the surface of the anal skin (external hemorrhoid)
  • internal respiration — the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the blood or lymph and the body cells
  • international candle — candle (def 3b).
  • international gothic — a style of Gothic art, especially painting, developed in Europe in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, chiefly characterized by details carefully delineated in a naturalistic manner, elongated and delicately modeled forms, the use of complex perspective, and an emphasis on the decorative or ornamental aspect of drapery, foliage, or setting.
  • international master — a chess player of high ability but below the level of International Grand Master, as determined through specified types of international competitions.
  • international orange — a shade of bright orange, highly visible at a great distance and in murky weather, used to color aircraft, airport towers and hangars, boats, etc., for safety or rescue purposes.
  • international system — an internationally accepted coherent system of physical units, derived from the MKSA (meter-kilogram-second-ampere) system, using the meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela as the basic units (SI units) respectively of the fundamental quantities of length, mass, time, electric current, temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity. Abbreviation: SI.
  • internationalisation — Alternative spelling of internationalization.
  • internationalization — internationalisation
  • interpersonal skills — skills that contribute to dealing successfully with other people
  • interpersonal theory — the theory that personality development and behavior disorders are related to and determined by relationships between persons.
  • interplanetary space — the region of space occurring around the sun and planets of the solar system. The density is normally negligible although cosmic rays, meteorites, gas clouds, etc, can occur
  • intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
  • intestinal fortitude — courage; resoluteness; endurance; guts: to have intestinal fortitude.
  • into/in cold storage — If you put an idea or plan into cold storage or in cold storage, you delay it for a while rather than acting on it as you originally intended.
  • islets of langerhans — biology: pancreatic cells
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