25-letter words containing a, t, s
- berkeley quality software — (abuse) (Often abbreviated "BQS") Term used in a pejorative sense to refer to software that was apparently created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some unique problem. It usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or incorrect documentation, has been tested on at least two examples, and core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. This term was frequently applied to early versions of the "dbx(1)" debugger. See also Berzerkeley.
- bernardin de saint-pierre — Jacques Henˈri (ʒɑkɑ̃ˈʀi) ; zhäkänrēˈ) 1737-1814; Fr. writer
- blow someone's brains out — To blow someone's brains out means to shoot them in the head, killing them.
- bring pressure to bear on — If you bring pressure or influence to bear on someone, you use it to try and persuade them to do something.
- british union of fascists — the British fascist party founded by Sir Oswald Mosley (1932), which advocated a strong corporate state and promoted anti-Semitism
- by general/common consent — You can use by general consent or by common consent to indicate that most people agree that something is true.
- by the seat of your pants — If you fly by the seat of your pants or do something by the seat of your pants, you use your instincts to tell you what to do in a new or difficult situation rather than following a plan or relying on equipment.
- canyonlands national park — a national park in SE Utah, at the junction of the Colorado and Green rivers: site of geologic interest. 527 sq. mi. (1366 sq. km).
- case integration services — (standard, programming) (CIS) A committee formed to discuss CASE tool integration standards related to ATIS.
- catch someone flat-footed — to catch someone who is unprepared; take by surprise
- catholic apostolic church — a nearly extinct English Protestant church established between 1832 and 1835, stressing the imminent coming of the millennium and the reestablishment of the primitive church's ministries.
- cauchy-schwarz inequality — Schwarz inequality (def 2).
- certificate of unruliness — (in Britain) the decision of a juvenile court that a young person on remand is too unmanageable for local-authority care and should be taken into custody
- character encoding scheme — character encoding
- characteristic polynomial — an expression obtained from a given matrix by taking the determinant of the difference between the matrix and an arbitrary variable times the identity matrix.
- cheshire west and chester — a unitary authority in NW England. Administrative centre: Chester. Pop: 328 100 (2008 est). Area: 917 sq km (354 sq miles)
- cheyne-stokes respiration — respiration characterized by cycles of deep, rapid breathing and weak, slow breathing, as in cases of heart failure or coma
- chief of naval operations — the highest officer in the U.S. Navy and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- child-resistant container — A child-resistant container is a container designed to be difficult for a child to open.
- circle of least confusion — the smallest cross section in a beam of paraxial rays, lying in the plane of least spherical aberration.
- coefficient of elasticity — modulus of elasticity.
- colony-stimulating factor — any of a number of substances, secreted by the bone marrow, that cause stem cells to proliferate and differentiate, forming colonies of specific blood cells. Synthetic forms are being tested for their ability to reduce the toxic effects of chemotherapy
- command control processor — (operating system) (CCP) CP/M's command-line interpreter.
- commissioner of education — (in the US) the head of a state's education department
- commonwealth of australia — Australia's official title
- communications of the acm — (publication) (CACM) A monthly publication by the Association for Computing Machinery sent to all members. CACM is an influential publication that keeps computer science professionals up to date on developments. Each issue includes articles, case studies, practitioner oriented pieces, regular columns, commentary, departments, the ACM Forum, technical correspondence and advertisements.
- compensated semiconductor — a semiconductor in which donors and acceptors are related in such a way that their opposing electrical effects are partially cancelled
- computational linguistics — the statistical study of language using computers
- computer-aided publishing — desktop publishing. Abbreviation: CAP.
- consolation of philosophy — Latin De Consolatione Philosophiae. a philosophical work (a.d. 523?) by Boethius.
- constant angular velocity — (storage) (CAV) One of the two schemes for controlling the rate of rotation of the disk in a disk drive. Constant angular velocity keeps the rate of rotation constant. This means that the linear velocity of the disk under the head is larger when reading or writing the outer tracks. This in turn implies either a variation in the data rate to and from the heads or the bits per unit length along the track. The alternative, constant linear velocity, requires the rate of rotation of the disk to accelerate and decelerate according to the radial postion of the heads, increasing the energy use and vibration.
- constant applicative form — (functional programming) (CAF) A supercombinator which is not a lambda abstraction. This includes truly constant expressions such as 12, (+ 1 2), [1, 2, 3] as well as partially applied functions such as (+ 4). Note that this last example is equivalent under eta abstraction to \ x . + 4 x which is not a CAF. Since a CAF is a supercombinator, it contains no free variables. Moreover, since it is not a lambda abstraction it contains no variables at all. It may however contain identifiers which refer to other CAFs, e.g. c 3 where c = (* 2). A CAF can always be lifted to the top level of the program. It can either be compiled to a piece of graph which will be shared by all uses or to some shared code which will overwrite itself with some graph the first time it is evaluated. A CAF such as ints = from 1 where from n = n : from (n+1) can grow without bound but may only be accessible from within the code of one or more functions. In order for the garbage collector to be able to reclaim such structures, we associate with each function a list of the CAFs to which it refers. When garbage collecting a reference to the function we collect the CAFs on its list.
- constitutional convention — the convention in Philadelphia (1787) of representatives from each of the former Colonies, except Rhode Island, at which the Constitution of the United States was framed.
- constitutional psychology — a school of thought postulating that the personality of an individual is dependent on the type of his physique (somatotype)
- constructional homonymity — the property of a string of morphemes that is susceptible of two or more syntactic analyses, as in Flying planes can be dangerous, planes may be either the object of flying or the subject of can.
- copyright deposit library — one of six libraries legally entitled to receive a gratis copy of every book published in the United Kingdom: the British Library, Bodleian, Cambridge University, Trinity College in Dublin, Scottish National Library, and National Library of Wales
- cost-of-living adjustment — an adjustment to pay which takes account of a change in the cost of living
- court of general sessions — a local court with general jurisdiction, both civil and criminal.
- cracked gas heat recovery — Cracked gas heat recovery is the process of recovering energy from cracked gas, which is used to produce high-pressure steam to drive turbines for compressor plants.
- creutzfeldt-jakob disease — a fatal slow-developing disease that affects the central nervous system, characterized by mental deterioration and loss of coordination of the limbs. It is thought to be caused by an abnormal prion protein in the brain
- crude oil degassing plant — A crude oil degassing plant is equipment that removes light ends such as methane and butane from crude oil.
- crude oil pyrolysis plant — A crude oil pyrolysis plant is equipment used for converting waste and poor fuel to a better product by pyrolysis (= the use of heat to decompose organic material).
- cut a person down to size — to reduce in importance or decrease the conceit of
- data processing equipment — Data processing equipment is electrically operated equipment that accumulates, processes, and stores data.
- dataphone digital service — (communications, product) (DDS) The first private-line digital service offered by AT&T, with data rates typically at 2.4, 4.8, 9.6 and 56 kilobits per second. DDS is now part of AT&T's Accunet family of services. Most LEC (local exchange carriers) and IXC (IntereXchange Carriers) offer similar services.
- decision support database — A database from which data is extracted and analysed statistically (but not modified) in order to inform business or other decisions. This is in contrast to an operational database which is being continuously updated. For example, a decision support database might provide data to determine the average salary of different types of workers, whereas an operational database containing the same data would be used to calculate pay check amounts. Often, decision support data is extracted from operation databases.
- decreasing term insurance — Decreasing term insurance is life insurance with the amount of coverage decreasing over the term of the policy and a lump sum payment if you die in advance.
- defense trade regulations — (legal) The U.S. law governening munitions export and defense technology (F-16s, TOW missiles and cryptology). According to the U.S. (and Canada) cryptography is a munition and people who export it can be charged as though they were exporting bombs or state secrets. People have been. See also EFF.
- democratic unionist party — a Northern Irish political party, founded by Ian Paisley in 1971, advocating the maintenance of union with the UK
- develop-mentally disabled — a disability, as mental retardation or cerebral palsy, that begins at an early age and continues indefinitely, leading to substantial handicap.