18-letter words containing e, m, p, r
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- fermat's last post — (humour) A post to a bug tracker, mailing list or forum in which the author claims to have found a simple fix or workaround for a bug, but never says what it is and never shows up again to explain it (even after others have been puzzling over the bug for years).
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- forced development — the processing of underexposed photographic film to increase the image density
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- four-color problem — the problem, solved in 1976, of proving the theorem that any geographic map can be colored using only four colors so that no connected countries with a common boundary are colored the same color.
- frequency spectrum — The frequency spectrum of an electrical signal is the distribution of the amplitudes and phases of each frequency component against frequency.
- from the ground up — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- from the housetops — publicly and widely
- fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
- gas-permeable lens — a semisoft contact lens, usually removed each day, that allows air to pass through to the eye and affords a wider range of vision corrections than a soft contact lens.
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.
- glomerulonephritis — a kidney disease affecting the capillaries of the glomeruli, characterized by albuminuria, edema, and hypertension.
- gnu superoptimiser — (GSO) A function sequence generator that uses an exhaustive generate-and-test approach to find the shortest instruction sequence for a given function. Written by Torbjorn Granlund <[email protected]> and Tom Wood. You have to tell the superoptimiser which function and which CPU you want to get code for. This is useful for compiler writers. FTP superopt-2.2.tar.Z from a GNU archive site. Generates code for DEC Alpha, SPARC, Intel 80386, 88000, RS/6000, 68000, 29000 and Pyramid (SP, AP and XP).
- gravity escapement — an escapement, used especially in large outdoor clocks, in which the impulse is given to the pendulum by means of a weight falling through a certain distance.
- grease the palm of — to influence by giving money to; bribe
- grumbling appendix — a condition in which the appendix causes intermittent pain but appendicitis has not developed
- gum digger's spear — a long steel probe used by gum diggers digging for kauri gum
- hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
- hearing impairment — partial deafness
- hemicorporectomies — Plural form of hemicorporectomy.
- hermaphrodite brig — a two-masted sailing vessel, square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft-rigged on the mainmast.
- homeowner's policy — a form of home insurance that provides compensation for damage, loss, or injury of property, personal belongings, or persons due to fire, theft, accidents, etc.
- hungry programmers — (body) A group of programmers producing free software.
- hydroxytryptamines — Plural form of hydroxytryptamine.
- hyper-metaphorical — a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”. Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def 1).
- hyperaldosteronism — aldosteronism.
- hyperbaric chamber — a steel vessel in which atmospheric pressure can be raised or lowered by air compressors, used to treat divers or pilots afflicted with aeroembolism and to provide high-oxygen environments for certain medical treatments and operations.
- hyperbilirubinemia — an abnormally high level of bilirubin in the blood, manifested by jaundice, anorexia, and malaise, occurring in association with liver disease and certain hemolytic anemias.
- hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
- hypermodern school — a style of chess characterized by control of the centre from the flanks
- hypochromic anemia — an anemia characterized by an abnormally low concentration of hemoglobin in the red blood cells, often due to iron deficiency.
- hypodermic syringe — a small glass piston or barrel syringe having a detachable, hollow needle for use in injecting solutions subcutaneously.
- imaginary operator — An imaginary operator is the part of a complex number that defines the magnitude of the part of the complex number at right angles to the real number part.
- impressionableness — The quality of being impressionable.
- in complete flower — a flower without one or more of the normal parts, as carpels, sepals, petals, pistils, or stamens.
- in someone's power — under the control or sway of someone
- incremental backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
- inner automorphism — an automorphism that maps an element x into an element of the form axa −1 where a −1 is the inverse of a.
- iomega corporation — (company, storage) A storage device manufacturer whose major products are the Zip and Jaz removable disk drives and Ditto tape drives. They became popular with an early product called the Bernoulli Box. These products fall in line with their focus set in 1994 "to help people manage their stuff". The company's stated aim is to create portable, fast, large and cheap storage solutions. Iomega's major competitor in the growing market for removable disks is SyQuest, who seem to always be a few weeks behind them. In general, Iomega target the Small Office/Home Office. They are also investigating the growing digital photography market which also needs large removable storage devices. Iomega's president and CEO is Kim Edwards. They have nearly 2000 employees in offices world-wide. Revenue for the quarter ending Dec 1996 was $371 million and net income was $20 million. Headquarters: Roy, Utah, USA.
- isothermal process — a process that takes place without change in temperature.
- japanese andromeda — an Asian evergreen shrub, Pieris japonica, of the heath family, having broad, glossy leaves and drooping clusters of whitish blossoms.
- japanese persimmon — the soft, orange or reddish, edible fruit of an Asian tree, Diospyros kaki.
- justice department — the United States federal department for enforcing federal laws
- linear programming — any of several methods for finding where a given linear function of several nonnegative variables assumes an extreme value and for determining the extreme value, the variable usually being subjected to constraints in the form of linear equalities or inequalities.
- list comprehension — (functional programming) An expression in a functional language denoting the results of some operation on (selected) elements of one or more lists. An example in Haskell: This returns all pairs of numbers (x,y) where x and y are elements of the list 1, 2, ..., 10, y <= x and their sum is less than 10. A list comprehension is simply "syntactic sugar" for a combination of applications of the functions, concat, map and filter. For instance the above example could be written: The term "list comprehension" appears in the references below. The earliest reference to the notation is in Rod Burstall and John Darlington's description of their language, NPL. David Turner subsequently adopted this notation in his languages SASL, KRC and Miranda, where he has called them "ZF expressions", set abstractions and list abstractions (in his 1985 FPCA paper [Miranda: A Non-Strict Functional Language with Polymorphic Types]).
- lone-parent family — a family in which there is only one parent
- macro preprocessor — preprocessor
- magnesium peroxide — a white, tasteless, water-insoluble powder, MgO 2 , used as an antiseptic and as an oxidizing and bleaching agent.