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24-letter words containing a, v, c

  • motorway service station — an establishment off a motorway where drivers can refuel their vehicles, buy food, drink, etc
  • multiple-valued function — function (def 4b).
  • national weather service — an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is responsible for meteorological observations, weather forecasts, storm and flood warnings, etc.
  • negative acknowledgement — 1.   (character)   (NAK) The mnemonic for ASCII character 21. Sometimes used as the response to receipt of a corrupted packet of information. Opposite of acknowledgement. 2.   (communications)   (NAK) Any message transmitted to indicate that some data has been received incorrectly, for example it may have a checksum or message length error. A NAK message allows the sender to distinguish a message which has been received in a corrupted state from one which is not received at all. An alternative is to use only ACK messages, in which case the non-receipt of an ACK after a certain time is counted as a NAK but gives no information about the integrity of the communications channel. See also ACK.
  • parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool)   (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
  • passbook savings account — a type of savings account in which transactions are entered into a passbook in the possession of the account holder.
  • passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
  • private health insurance — insurance against the need for medical treatment as a private patient
  • private-key cryptography — (cryptography)   As opposed to public-key cryptography, a cryptographic method in which the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. Private-key algorithms include the obsolescent Data Encryption Standard (DES), triple-DES (3DES), the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known as Rijndael, Blowfish, Twofish RC2, RC4, RC5 and RC6. A problem with private-key cryptography is that the sender and the recipient of the message must agree on a common key via some alternative secure channel.
  • privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
  • progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
  • public access television — television in which local producers or individuals can participate
  • public-access television — a noncommercial system of broadcasting on television channels made available to independent or community groups for programs of general interest to the community.
  • punch above one's weight — to do something that is considered to be beyond one's ability
  • quantitative inheritance — the process in which the additive action of numerous genes results in a trait, as height, showing continuous variability.
  • recursive descent parser — (grammar)   A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
  • relative record data set — (database)   (RRDS) One of the access methods used by IBM's VSAM.
  • remote method invocation — (programming)   (RMI) Part of the Java programming language library which enables a Java program running on one computer to access the objects and methods of another Java program running on a different computer.
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
  • research and development — the part of a commercial company's activity concerned with applying the results of scientific research to develop new products and improve existing ones
  • revolving charge account — a charge plan offerring revolving credit.
  • scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web)   A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
  • schizoaffective disorder — a psychotic disorder in which symptoms of schizophrenia and affective disorder occur simultaneously.
  • special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
  • supportive psychotherapy — a type of psychotherapy that seeks to reduce psychological conflict and strengthen a patient's defenses through the use of various techniques, as reassurance, suggestion, counseling, and reeducation.
  • text encoding initiative — (text, project, standard)   (TEI) A project working to establish a standard for interchanging electronic text for scholarly research. The TEI has adopted SGML and implemented the TEI standard as an SGML Document Type Definition. The TEI was incorporated as a not-for-profit consortium in December 2000, with host sites in Bergen, Oxford, Virginia, and Providence RI, USA. See also Corpus Processing.
  • the villain of the piece — If you say that someone is the villain of the piece, you are saying in a slightly humorous way that they are seen by some people as the cause of all the trouble in a particular situation.
  • to have egg on your face — If someone has egg on their face or has egg all over their face, they have been made to look foolish.
  • tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
  • twin vector quantization — (audio, compression)   (VQF) Part of the MPEG-4 standard dealing with time domain weighted interleaved vector quantization.
  • universal life insurance — a type of insurance in which the payments of the insured are placed in an investment fund, earnings from which pay the premium on term life insurance while any remainder continues to increase the policy's value.
  • variable pitch propeller — a propeller in which the angle of the blades with regard to air flow can be adjusted while it is in operation
  • ventricular fibrillation — Pathology. a cardiac arrhythmia characterized by rapid, chaotic electrical impulses to the ventricles, incomplete ventricular contractions, and resultant loss of pulse and blood pressure.
  • very large crude carrier — VLCC.
  • video cassette recording — a recording made using a tape recorder for vision and sound signals using magnetic tape in closed plastic cassettes: used for recording and playing back television programmes and films
  • virtual software factory — (programming, tool)   (VSF) A product from Systematica which allows users to develop CASE tools appropriate to any software engineering methodology.
  • visual component library — (programming)   VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
  • volume table of contents — (storage)   (VTOC) /V-tock/ A special file on a disk, which contains a list of all the ordinary files on the disk and their addresses. Also called a directory. The term is used mostly with large mainframe disk drives. Storage administrators will often refer to the VTOC to obtain information on the number of files stored on a disk.
  • voluntary aid detachment — (in World War I) an organization of British women volunteers who assisted in military hospitals and ambulance duties
  • wired equivalent privacy — (networking, standard)   (WEP) IEEE 802.11:1999. A cryptographic privacy algorithm, based on the RC4 encryption engine, used to provide confidentiality for 802.11 wireless networks. WEP is intended to provide roughly the same level of confidentiality for wireless data as a wired LAN (Ethernet), which is NOT protected by encryption. WEP is often wrongly expanded as "Wireless Encryption Protocol". WEP is a protocol that provides encryption used on wireless networks but that's not what it stands for.
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