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21-letter words containing e, g, h

  • night storage heating — a system of heating which uses a heater or radiator that stores heat at night-time because electricity is cheaper
  • night-blooming cereus — any of various cacti of the genera Hylocereus, Peniocereus, Nyctocereus, or Selenicereus, having large, usually white flowers that open at night.
  • 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.
  • no/nothing other than — You use nothing other than and no other than when you are going to mention a course of action, decision, or description and emphasize that it is the only one possible in the situation.
  • north east new guinea — the NE part of the former Australian Territory of New Guinea; now part of Papua New Guinea.
  • not care a hang about — to not care the least bit about
  • one foot in the grave — near to death
  • one thing and another — You can use the expression 'one thing and another' to suggest that there are several reasons for something or several items on a list, but you are not going to explain or mention them all.
  • 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.
  • orthogonal projection — a two-dimensional graphic representation of an object in which the projecting lines are at right angles to the plane of the projection. Also called orthogonal projection. Compare isometric (def 5).
  • orthogonal trajectory — the locus of a point whose path cuts each curve of a family of curves at right angles.
  • overhead-valve engine — I-head engine.
  • pacific daylight time — the version of Pacific Standard Time that is in use when daylight saving time is being observed
  • path coverage testing — (testing)   Testing a program by examining which lines of executable code are visited (as in code coverage testing) and also the ways of getting to each line of code and the subsequent sequence of execution. Path coverage testing is the most comprehensive type of testing that a test suite can provide. It can find more bugs, especially those that are caused by data coupling. However, path coverage is hard and usually only used for small and/or critical sections of code.
  • performance-enhancing — noting or relating to a drug or other substance used to improve one's performance in a sport or other activity requiring strength, stamina, etc.: The use of performance-enhancing steroids by athletes is banned.
  • physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • pneumoencephalography — encephalography.
  • polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
  • portrait photographer — a photographer who specializes in portraits
  • profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
  • programmed cell death — a normal, genetically regulated process leading to the death of cells and triggered by the presence or absence of certain stimuli, as DNA damage.
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • psychoneuroimmunology — the study of the effects of psychological factors on the immune system
  • pull oneself together — to draw or haul toward oneself or itself, in a particular direction, or into a particular position: to pull a sled up a hill.
  • pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
  • pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
  • purchasing department — the group of staff within an organization that is responsible for buying goods or products
  • purple-fringed orchid — either of two orchids, Habenaria fimbriata or H. psycodes, of eastern North America, having a cluster of fragrant purple flowers with a fringed lip.
  • purple-fringed orchis — either of two North American orchids (Habenaria psycodes and H. fimbriata) with purple-fringed flowers
  • put something over on — to deceive; trick
  • rayleigh distribution — (mathematics)   A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
  • reading comprehension — a text that students use to help them improve their reading skills, by reading it and answering questions relating to the text. Sometimes used as a test or examination of reading skills. A reading comprehension can be in the student's own or another language
  • reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
  • rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
  • redlegged grasshopper — a migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, of the southwestern and midwestern U.S., having reddish skin on the underside of the hind legs: an agricultural pest.
  • replacement algorithm — The method used to determine which entry in an associative cache to flush to main memory when it is desired to cache a new block of data. The "least recently used" algorithm flushed the block which has not been accessed for the longest time. A random replacement algorithm picks any block with equal probability.
  • right-angled triangle — a triangle one angle of which is a right angle
  • ring down the curtain — to lower the curtain at the end of a theatrical performance
  • ring-around-the-rosey — a children's game in which the players sing while going around in a circle and squat when the lyrics “all fall down” are sung.
  • rolling in the aisles — (of an audience) overcome with laughter
  • rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
  • safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
  • sail against the wind — to sail a course that slants slightly away from the true direction of the wind; sail closehauled
  • salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
  • satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
  • sb/sth reigns supreme — Someone or something that reigns supreme is the most important or powerful element in a situation or period of time.
  • schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
  • schoolgirl complexion — a smooth, clear complexion, such as schoolgirls are considered to have
  • sealed-beam headlight — a headlight in which the reflector and lens are hermetically sealed together with the filament in a single unit.
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