22-letter words containing c, h, i, s
- nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
- nonspecific urethritis — nongonococcal urethritis.
- oak processionary moth — a moth, (Thaumetopoea processionea), of the family Thaumetopoeidae, the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- occupational therapist — professional who assists with rehabilitation
- oceanic whitetip shark — whitetip shark (def 2).
- once bitten, twice shy — You say 'once bitten, twice shy' when you want to indicate that someone will not do something a second time because they had a bad experience the first time they did it.
- other side of the coin — a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as money.
- ousterhout's dichotomy — (language) John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
- padparadschah sapphire — a rare, yellowish-orange sapphire found in Sri Lanka.
- paranoid schizophrenia — severe psychiatric disorder
- paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
- partnerships for peace — a subsidiary organization of NATO, comprising former Warsaw Pact countries that wish to be allied with NATO but have not been granted full NATO membership: established in 1994
- peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
- philosophical analysis — linguistic analysis.
- phosphorus trichloride — a clear, colorless, fuming liquid, PCl 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis as a chlorinating agent.
- physiographic province — a geographic region in which climate and geology have given rise to an array of landforms different from those of surrounding regions.
- play one's cards right — a usually rectangular piece of stiff paper, thin pasteboard, or plastic for various uses, as to write information on or printed as a means of identifying the holder: a 3″ × 5″ file card; a membership card.
- poor richard's almanac — an almanac (1732–58) written and published by Benjamin Franklin.
- prawn-sandwich brigade — sports fans who are perceived to lack passion and commitment, and who it is supposed attend matches in order to eat food and buy merchandise rather than cheer on their team
- process cinematography — cinematography in which the main or foreground action or scene is superimposed on or combined with simulated or separately filmed background action or scenery to produce special visual effects.
- prothonotary apostolic — a member of the first college of prelates of the Roman Curia.
- psychological thriller — book, movie: suspense story
- public housing project — a group of homes for poorer families which is funded and controlled by the local government
- public service vehicle — a bus or coach
- quantum chromodynamics — a quantum field theory that describes quarks and gluons and their interactions, with the color of the quarks playing a role analogous to that of electric charge. Abbreviation: QCD. Also called chromodynamics. Compare color (def 18).
- queen's bench division — (in England when the sovereign is female) one of the divisions of the High Court of Justice
- reactive schizophrenia — a type of schizophrenia of rapid onset and brief duration that occurs in response to environmental factors.
- recreational therapist — someone who specializes in therapy by means of recreational activities engaged in by the patient
- research establishment — an establishment or institution where research or investigation into a subject, topic, etc, can be conducted
- research systems, inc. — (RSI) Distributors of Interactive Data Language (IDL).
- resistance thermometer — an instrument for measuring the temperature of a metal, utilizing the principle that the electrical resistance of the metal varies with the temperature.
- sail close to the wind — air in natural motion, as that moving horizontally at any velocity along the earth's surface: A gentle wind blew through the valley. High winds were forecast.
- saint george's channel — a channel between Wales and Ireland, connecting the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. 100 miles (160 km) long; 50–90 miles (81–145 km) wide.
- salt-marsh caterpillar — the fuzzy larva of a moth, Estigmene acrea, of North America, destructive to various crops.
- saturday night special — a cheap, small-caliber handgun that is easily obtainable and concealable.
- saturday-night special — a cheap, small-caliber handgun that is easily obtainable and concealable.
- save the children fund — a development agency which raises money for deprived children around the world
- sb can whistle for sth — If you say that someone can whistle for a particular thing, you mean that you are not willing or able to give it to them.
- schachter's hypothesis — (web) The observation that "Given two unrelated technical terms, an Internet search engine will retrieve only résumés". This was first formulated by Joshua Eli Schachter in about 1998, while poring over the uniformly irrelevant pages that resulted from a search he'd run on "+Perl +MAPI" in Altavista.
- school crossing patrol — the official name for lollipop man or lady
- school medical officer — a doctor who is based in a school and is responsible for the health of schoolchildren
- search the fucking web — (web, jargon) (Always abbreviated STFW) A response implying that an inquirer could have easily found an answer to his question using Google or some other web search engine. It is now often quicker and more productive to search the World-Wide Web than to RTFM.
- second consonant shift — the consonant shift by which High German became differentiated from other Germanic languages.
- seventh-inning stretch — Baseball. a point in the game when spectators rise from their seats to relax by stretching their legs, usually after six and one-half innings.
- short end of the stick — a branch or shoot of a tree or shrub that has been cut or broken off.
- silicon graphics, inc. — (company) (SGI) Manufacturer of workstations and software for graphics and image processing. SGI was founded by Dr. James H. Clark, who left some time before May 1994 to head Mosaic Communications Corporation. Quarterly sales $433M, profits $44M (Aug 1994).
- simple harmonic motion — vibratory motion in a system in which the restoring force is proportional to the displacement from equilibrium. Abbreviation: S.H.M., s.h.m.
- skeleton in the closet — Anatomy, Zoology. the bones of a human or an animal considered as a whole, together forming the framework of the body.
- south african republic — former name of Transvaal.
- south atlantic current — an eastward-flowing ocean current formed by the merging of the Brazil Current and the southward-flowing current near the Falkland Islands and forming the southern part of the general circulation of the South Atlantic Ocean.