20-letter words containing d, p, a, r
- fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
- fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
- fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
- fundamental particle — elementary particle.
- happy hunting ground — the North American Indian heaven, conceived of as a paradise of hunting and feasting for warriors and hunters.
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- hazard warning lamps — Hazard warning lamps are flashing lamps on each corner of a vehicle that are used to show the position of the vehicle if there has been a breakdown or an accident.
- heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
- horizontally opposed — A horizontally opposed engine has the cylinders set horizontally at either side of the crankshaft.
- hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
- hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- hypophosphorous acid — a colorless or yellowish, water-soluble, liquid, monobasic acid, H 3 PO 2 , having a sour odor, and used as a reducing agent.
- ideal of pure reason — God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- incorporated company — a legally constituted company
- independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
- indicated horsepower — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
- infrared photography — photography using film with an emulsion that is sensitive to infrared light, enabling it to be used in misty weather, in darkened interiors, or at night. It has applications in aerial surveys, the detection of forgeries, etc
- initial program load — (operating system) (IPL) The procedure used to (re-)start a computer system by copying the operating system kernel into main memory and running it. Part of the boot sequence.
- inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
- jacopo della quercia — Jacopo Della [yah-kaw-paw del-lah] /ˈyɑ kɔ pɔ ˌdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), 1374?–1438, Italian sculptor.
- japanese pagoda tree — pagoda tree.
- judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
- learned helplessness — the act of giving up trying as a result of consistent failure to be rewarded in life, thought to be a symptom of depression
- like death warmed up — very ill
- linear address space — A memory addressing scheme used in processors where the whole memory can be accessed using a single address that fits in a single register or instruction. This contrasts with a segmented memory architecture, such as that used on the Intel 8086, where an address is given by an offset from a base address held in one of the "segment registers". Linear addressing greatly simplifies programming at the assembly language level but requires more instruction word bits to be allocated for an address.
- llywelyn ap gruffudd — died 1282, prince of Wales (1258–82): the only Welsh ruler to be recognized as such by the English
- magdeburg hemisphere — one of a pair of hemispherical cups from which air can be evacuated when they are placed together: used to demonstrate the force of air pressure.
- marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
- matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
- maternal deprivation — the lack of a mother in a child's life, considered a cause of psychological problems later in life
- medical practitioner — doctor
- medieval warm period — the time, c900–1400, during which warmer temperatures existed in many parts of the world. Abbreviation: MWP.
- megabytes per second — (unit) (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
- memory address space — (architecture) 1. Any part of a processor's address space that is occupied by memory. 2. The range of addresses seen by a memory device relative to the base address at which it is mapped into the processor's address space.
- mpeg-1 audio layer 1 — (audio, compression, algorithm) (MP1) A simple 32-subband audio compressor using a floating point representation for subband samples. Resolution and scale factor are stored for groups of 12 subsamples. MP1 is only used for Philips DCC Digital Compact cassette with data rates of 384 kbps.
- mpeg-1 audio layer 3 — (music, file format) (MP3) A digital audio compression algorithm that acheives a compression factor of about twelve while preserving sound quality. It does this by optimising the compression according to the range of sound that people can actually hear. MP3 is currently (July 1999) the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). MP3 is very different from Layer 2, using an additional MDCT layer to increase frequency resolution. Its scale factor groups are more optimised for the human ear, and it uses nonlinear sample quantisation and Huffman coding. MP3 files (filename extension ".mp3") can be downloaded from many websites and can be played using software available for most operating systems (also downloadable), e.g. Winamp for PC, MacAmp for Macintosh, and mpeg123 for Unix. MP3 files are usually downloaded completely before playing but streaming MP3 is also possible. A program called a "ripper" can be used to copy a selection from a music CD onto your hard disk and another program called an encoder can convert it to an MP3 file.
- mpeg-2 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format) An extention of MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for lower sampling rates (16-24 kHz) targeting bit rates from 32-64 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps). It is often combined with MPEG-2 LSF.
- multistep hydroplane — a motorship having a flat bottom built as a series of planes inclined forward, the ship planing on each from stem to stern as its speed increases.
- net national product — the gross national product less allowance for depreciation of capital goods. Abbreviation: NNP.
- new democratic party — the Canadian social democratic party formed in 1961
- nondirective therapy — client-centered therapy.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- operant conditioning — conditioning (def 1).
- operating conditions — Operating conditions are a set of conditions for operating a particular system or process.
- operational database — (database) A database containing up-to-date, modifiable data, in contrast to a decision support database.
- operator overloading — overloading