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21-letter words containing a, y, r, e, s

  • gestalt psychotherapy — a therapy devised in the US in the 1960s in which patients are encouraged to concentrate on the immediate present and to express their true feelings
  • great smoky mountains — the W part of the Appalachians, in W North Carolina and E Tennessee. Highest peak: Clingman's Dome, 2024 m (6642 ft)
  • greenwich observatory — the national astronomical observatory of Great Britain, housed in a castle in E Sussex; formerly located at Greenwich.
  • henry steele commager — Henry Steele, 1902–98, U.S. historian, author, and teacher.
  • hypercholesterolaemia — the condition of having a high concentration of cholesterol in the blood
  • hysterosalpingography — (medicine) X-ray examination of the uterus and oviducts following injection of a radiopaque substance.
  • imprecise probability — (probability)   A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
  • in more ways than one — You say in more ways than one to indicate that what you have said is intended to have more than one meaning.
  • inflationary universe — a version of the big bang theory in which the universe underwent very rapid growth during the first fraction of a second before it settled down to its current rate of expansion.
  • insulin shock therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
  • interpersonal therapy — a type of psychotherapy that focuses on conflicts in one's personal relationships.
  • intersubstitutability — a person or thing acting or serving in place of another.
  • intracoastal waterway — a mostly inland water route, partly natural and partly artificial, extending 1550 miles (2500 km) along the Atlantic coast from Boston to Florida Bay (Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway) and 1116 miles (1800 km) along the Gulf coast from Carrabelle, Fla., to Brownsville, Tex. (Gulf Intracoastal Waterway) constructed to protect small craft from the hazards of the open sea.
  • irish republican army — an underground Irish nationalist organization founded to work for Irish independence from Great Britain: declared illegal by the Irish government in 1936, but continues activity aimed at the unification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Abbreviation: IRA, I.R.A.
  • isopropylideneacetone — mesityl oxide.
  • keyboard send receive — (hardware)   (KSR) Part of a designation for a hard-copy terminal, manufactured by Teletype Corporation. The KSR range were lower cost versions of the ASR models.
  • lactate dehydrogenase — an enzyme that catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate, an important step in carbohydrate metabolism: elevated serum levels indicate injury to kidney, skeletal muscle, or heart muscle. Abbreviation: LDH.
  • lady macbeth strategy — a strategy in a takeover battle in which a third party makes a bid acceptable to the target company, appearing to act as a white knight but subsequently joining forces with the original (unwelcome) bidder
  • lady windermere's fan — a comedy (1892) by Oscar Wilde.
  • lafayette, marquis de — Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier [ma-ree zhaw-zef pawl eev rawk zheel-ber dy maw-tyey] /maˈri ʒɔˈzɛf pɔl iv rɔk ʒilˈbɛr dü mɔˈtyeɪ/ (Show IPA), Marquis de. Also, La Fayette. 1757–1834, French soldier, statesman, and liberal leader, who served in the American Revolutionary Army as aide-de-camp to General Washington, and took a leading part in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830.
  • law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
  • lay at someone's door — a movable, usually solid, barrier for opening and closing an entranceway, cupboard, cabinet, or the like, commonly turning on hinges or sliding in grooves.
  • like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
  • macgillicuddy's reeks — a mountain range in County Kerry, SW Ireland. Highest peak (also highest in Ireland), Carrantuohill, 3414 feet (1041 meters).
  • majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
  • make yourself at home — settle in
  • mask read-only memory — (storage)   (MROM) A kind of ROM in which the memory contents are determined by one of the masks used to manufacture the integrated circuit. MROM can give high storage density (bits per millimeter squared) making it a cheap solution for high volume applications.
  • mauna kea observatory — an astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, situated at an altitude of 13,600 feet (4145 meters).
  • mayor of casterbridge — a novel (1886) by Thomas Hardy.
  • mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • multichannel analyser — an electronic instrument, such as a pulse height analyser, that splits an input waveform into a large number of channels in accordance with a particular parameter of the input
  • munchausen's syndrome — a mental disorder in which a patient feigns illness to obtain hospital treatment
  • new year's resolution — If you make a New Year's resolution, you make a decision at the beginning of a year to start doing something or to stop doing something.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • open graphics library — (graphics, library)   (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
  • overuse strain injury — (medical)   (Or "repetitive strain injury", RSI, "repetitive strain disorder") Any tendon or muscle injury resulting from overuse, usually in the hand, wrist, or arm. Injury may be caused by any combination of repetitive, unacustomed, or prolonged movements, forcefulness, or an awkward position (often due to bad ergonomics). The symptoms are pain, tingling, weakness, numbness, swelling, cracking, stiffness, or reduced coordination. Common conditions are: Carpal tunnel syndrome, where swelling of the membrane linings in your wrist surrounding the tendons that bend your fingers compresses the median nerve. This may result in numbness and pain in the hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. Tennis elbow, where rotating your wrist and using force causes a form of epicondylitis. Tendinitis, where unacustomed exercise or repeated awkward movements inflame wrist, elbow, or shoulder tendons, often leading to severe stiffness. Trigger finger, a popping or catching sensation when you bend your finger, wrist, or shoulder. This form of tenosynovitis is caused by repetitive hand movements. To prevent the condition worsening, treat the pain with heat, cold, or aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium; rest; or immobilise the injured area with a splint or bandage. See a doctor.
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • picture quality scale — (graphics)   (PQS) A system for rating image quality based upon features of images that affect their perception by the human eye, rather than the traditional signal-to-noise ratio which examines differences for every single pixel.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
  • primary sex character — any of the body structures directly concerned in reproduction, as the testes, ovaries, and external genitalia.
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