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22-letter words containing d, s, p

  • hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
  • hybrid multiprocessing — (parallel)   (HMP) The kind of multitasking which OS/2 supports. HMP provides some elements of symmetric multiprocessing, using add-on IBM software called MP/2. OS/2 SMP was planned for release in late 1993.
  • in the lap of the gods — If you say that a situation is in the lap of the gods, you mean that its success or failure depends entirely on luck or on things that are outside your control.
  • independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
  • independent suspension — an automotive suspension system in which each wheel is attached to the frame independently, so that a road bump affecting one wheel has no effect on the others.
  • interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
  • jacquard, joseph-marie — Joseph-Marie Jacquard
  • keep one's eyes peeled — to watch vigilantly (for)
  • landscape architecture — the art of arranging or modifying the features of a landscape, an urban area, etc., for aesthetic or practical reasons.
  • lesser spotted dogfish — a small spotted European shark, Scyliorhinus caniculus
  • let sth drop/fall/slip — If you let drop, let fall, or let slip information, you reveal it casually or by accident, during a conversation about something else.
  • liquid crystal display — (hardware)   (LCD) An electro-optical device used to display digits, characters or images, commonly used in digital watches, calculators, and portable computers. The heart of the liquid crystal display is a piece of liquid crystal material placed between a pair of transparent electrodes. The liquid crystal changes the phase of the light passing through it and this phase change can be controlled by the voltage applied between the electrodes. If such a unit is placed between a pair of plane polariser plates then light can pass through it only if the correct voltage is applied. Liquid crystal displays are formed by integrating a number of such cells, or more usually, by using a single liquid crystal plate and a pattern of electrodes. The simplest kind of liquid crystal displays, those used in digital watches and calculators, contain a common electrode plane covering one side and a pattern of electrodes on the other. These electrodes can be individually controlled to produce the appropriate display. Computer displays, however, require far too many pixels (typically between 50,000 and several millions) to make this scheme, in particular its wiring, feasible. The electrodes are therefore replaced by a number of row electrodes on one side and column electrodes on the other. By applying voltage to one row and several columns the pixels at the intersections are set. The pixels being set one row after the other, in passive matrix displays the number of rows is limited by the ratio of the setting and fading times. In the setup described above (known as "twisted nematic") the number of rows is limited to about 20. Using an alternative "supertwisted nematic" setup VGA quality displays (480 rows) can be easily built. As of 1995 most notebook computers used this technique. Fading can be slowed by putting an active element, such as a transistor, on the top of each pixel. This "remembers" the setting of that pixel. These active matrix displays are of much better quality (as good as CRTs) but are much more expensive than the passive matrix displays. LCDs are slimmer, lighter and consume less power than the previous dominant display type, the cathode ray tube, hence their importance for portable computers.
  • little st bernard pass — a pass over the Savoy Alps, between Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, and La Thuile, Italy: 11th-century hospice. Height: 2187 m (7177 ft)
  • lord justice of appeal — an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal
  • mind one's p's and q's — to be careful to behave correctly and use polite or suitable language
  • motoring correspondent — a journalist who reviews and writes about cars
  • non-hodgkin's lymphoma — Pathology. any of several malignancies of the lymphatic system in which the cells characteristic of Hodgkin's disease are absent.
  • not be sb's department — If you say that a task or area of knowledge is not your department, you mean that you are not responsible for it or do not know much about it.
  • object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
  • open source definition — (standard)   (OSD) Definition of distribution terms for open source software, promoted by the Open Source Initiative.
  • operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
  • operational data store — (database)   (ODS) A group of integrated databases designed to support the monitoring of operations. Unlike function oriented databases, an ODS contains subject-oriented, dynamic, current enterprise-wide information that is continually updated to show the current state of operations.
  • outside awareness port — (humour)   (OAP) A humorous IBM term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the GUI kind.
  • paddle one's own canoe — any of various slender, open boats, tapering to a point at both ends, propelled by paddles or sometimes sails and traditionally formed of light framework covered with bark, skins, or canvas, or formed from a dug-out or burned-out log or logs, and now usually made of aluminum, fiberglass, etc.
  • padparadschah sapphire — a rare, yellowish-orange sapphire found in Sri Lanka.
  • pale horse, pale rider — a trilogy of short novels (1939) by Katherine Anne Porter.
  • paracoccidioidomycosis — a chronic infection caused by the fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, occurring in Mexico and in Central and South America, characterized by mouth and throat ulcers, weight loss, and lesions on the skin, intestines, and genitals.
  • paranoid schizophrenia — severe psychiatric disorder
  • parker morris standard — (in Britain) a set of minimum criteria for good housing construction, design, and facilities, recommended by the 1961 report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Parker Morris. Subsequent governments have urged private and local authority house-builders to achieve these standards
  • paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
  • passive matrix display — (hardware)   A type of liquid crystal display which relies on persistence to maintain the state of each display element (pixel) between refresh scans. The resolution of such displays is limited by the ratio between the time to set a pixel and the time it takes to fade. Contrast active matrix display.
  • pay dearly/cost dearly — If you pay dearly for doing something or if it costs you dearly, you suffer a lot as a result.
  • peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
  • personal rapid transit — a short system of small, self-propelled, automated, rubber-tired vehicles that usually run on elevated concrete tracks and allow a passenger a limited selection of routes, as in an amusement park or at an airport. Abbreviation: PRT.
  • phosphorus trichloride — a clear, colorless, fuming liquid, PCl 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis as a chlorinating agent.
  • pizza delivery service — a service whereby a pizza restaurant delivers pizzas to customers who order by telephone
  • planck's radiation law — the law that energy associated with electromagnetic radiation, as light, is composed of discrete quanta of energy, each quantum equal to Planck's constant times the corresponding frequency of the radiation: the fundamental law of quantum mechanics.
  • plastic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (PPGA) The package used for certain Intel Celeron processors. PPGA processors fit into Socket 370 motherboard sockets. The Plastic Pin Grid Array packaging is similar to that used on Pentium processors. The silicon core is covered by a heat slug that faces down toward the motherboard. The Celeron 300A to the 533 use a PPGA package. The Celeron 566 onward use a FC-PGA package. Celeron processors are also available in Slot 1 SEPP packaging.
  • play into the hands of — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • 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.
  • portable standard lisp — (language)   (PSL) A dialect of Lisp from Utah University. PSL is available as a kit for 68000 and also runs on VAX. It compiles Lisp to C-code virtual machine language.
  • post office department — former name of United States Postal Service.
  • 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.
  • potassium-argon dating — a method for estimating the age of a mineral or rock, based on measurement of the rate of decay of radioactive potassium into argon.
  • 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
  • preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
  • prince edward islander — a native or inhabitant of Prince Edward Island
  • prince of wales island — the largest island in the Alexander Archipelago, in SE Alaska. 1500 sq. mi. (3990 sq. km).
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