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22-letter words containing c, i, s, o, y, t

  • 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.
  • paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
  • 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.
  • pneumocystis pneumonia — a pulmonary infection caused by the protozoan Pneumocystis carinii, occurring as an opportunistic disease in persons with impaired immune systems, as AIDS victims. Abbreviation: PCP.
  • potassium ferricyanide — a bright-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 3 Fe(CN) 6 , used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, as Prussian blue, and of paper, especially blueprint paper.
  • potassium ferrocyanide — a lemon-yellow, crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 4 Fe(CN) 6 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in casehardening alloys having an iron base and in dyeing wool and silk.
  • 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
  • pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.
  • 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).
  • reconstructive surgery — the restoration of appearance and function following injury or disease, or the correction of congenital defects, using the techniques of plastic surgery.
  • rocky mountain oysters — mountain oyster.
  • 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.
  • secondary articulation — coarticulation (def 2).
  • secondary-articulation — concomitance of articulation, as in fro, ostensibly a succession of three discrete sounds but physically a single articulation (f-) blending into a coarticulation (-fr-), which blends into an articulation (-r-), which blends into a coarticulation (-ro-), which blends into an articulation (-o).
  • social security number — A Social Security number is a nine digit number that is given to U.S. citizens and to people living in the U.S. You need it to get a job, collect Social Security benefits and receive some government services.
  • somatic nervous system — the section of the nervous system responsible for sensation and control of the skeletal muscles
  • speckle interferometry — a photographic technique for clarifying the telescopic images of a star by taking short exposures of the electronic images of the star's speckle pattern and extrapolating properties of the starlight to create a more accurate composite image.
  • spectrophotometrically — an instrument for making photometric comparisons between parts of spectra.
  • spectroscopic analysis — the use of spectroscopy in determining the chemical or physical constitution of substances
  • speculative philosophy — philosophy embodying beliefs insusceptible of proof and attempting to gain insight into the nature of the ultimate by intuitive or a priori means.
  • spherical trigonometry — the branch of trigonometry that deals with spherical triangles.
  • stereospecific polymer — an organic polymer in which the steric arrangements of groups on asymmetric carbon atoms occur in a regular sequence
  • subjective probability — a measure or estimate of the degree of confidence one may have in the occurrence of an event, defined by subjective criteria
  • suffice it to say that — let us say no more than that; I shall just say that
  • sun microsystems, inc. — (company)   One of the first, and now biggest, US computer manufacturers. They also manufacture in Europe. The Sun-2 and 3 series of workstations and servers were based on the Motorola 680x0 family of microprocessors and the Sun-4 series on the SPARC. Sun also produce their own version of Unix, originally called SunOS and now Solaris. Their Network File System has become the de facto standard for sharing files between Unix systems. Sun own MySQL AB. Sun was bought by Oracle Corporation on 2009-04-20. Quarterly sales $1403M, profits $78M (Aug 1994). Address: 2550 Garcia Ave., Mt. View, CA 94043 -1100 USA.
  • sympathetic ophthalmia — inflammation of one eye due to injury or disease of the other eye.
  • synchronic linguistics — the branch of linguistics that analyzes the structure of a language or languages as static, at a given point in their history
  • syntactic construction — a construction that has no bound forms among its immediate constituents. Compare morphologic construction.
  • the continental system — Napoleon's plan in 1806 to blockade Britain by excluding her ships from ports on the mainland of Europe
  • to be knocked sideways — If you are knocked sideways by something, it makes you feel very surprised, confused, or upset.
  • to cast your mind back — If you cast your mind back to a time in the past, you think about what happened then.
  • to cast your net wider — If you cast your net wider, you look for or consider a greater variety of things.
  • to stick your neck out — If you stick your neck out, you bravely say or do something that might be criticized or might turn out to be wrong.
  • transactional analysis — a form of individual or group psychotherapy focusing on social interactions, psychological games, and analysis of relationships as persons shift among the roles of parent, child, and adult. Abbreviation: TA.
  • unemployment insurance — a government program that provides a limited number of payments to eligible workers who are involuntarily unemployed.
  • university of michigan — (body, education)   A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. 70% of the University's students graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. 90% rank in the top 20% of their high school class. 60% of the students receive financial aid. The main Ann Arbor Campus lies in the Huron River valley, 40 miles west of Detroit. The campus boasts 2700 acres with 200 buildings, six million volumes in 23 libraries, nine museums, seven hospitals, hundreds of laboratories and institutes, and over 18000 microcomputers.
  • white australia policy — an unofficial term for an immigration policy designed to restrict the entry of non-White people into Australia
  • yellow-shafted flicker — a North American woodpecker C. auratus, which has a yellow undersurface to the wings and tail
  • you can say that again — yes: emphatically
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