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21-letter words containing e, p, i, s, t, l

  • imprecise probability — (probability)   A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
  • indo-australian plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising India and the Australian continent and adjacent suboceanic basins (the Tasman, South Australian, Mid-Indian, Cocos, and Australian basins); separated from the Eurasian Plate by the Java Trench, from the Pacific Plate by the Tonga-Kermadec Trench, and from the African Plate by a series of mid-ocean ridges (the Carlsberg, Mid-Indian, and Southeast Indian ridges).
  • induction loop system — a system enabling partially deaf people to hear dialogue and sound in theatres, cinemas, etc, consisting of a loop of wire placed round the perimeter of a designated area. This emits an electromagnetic signal which is picked up by a hearing aid
  • insulin shock therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
  • interpersonal therapy — a type of psychotherapy that focuses on conflicts in one's personal relationships.
  • isopropylideneacetone — mesityl oxide.
  • leaning tower of pisa — a round, marble campanile in Pisa, Italy, begun in 1174 and now 17 feet (5.2 meters) out of the perpendicular in its height of 179 feet (54 meters).
  • least common multiple — lowest common multiple.
  • let sleeping dogs lie — a domesticated canid, Canis familiaris, bred in many varieties.
  • lordship of the isles — an overlordship of the Western Isles of Scotland and adjacent lands instituted in 1266 when Magnus of Norway ceded the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, and Kintyre to the King of Scotland, and claimed by the chiefs of Clan Dougall and later by those of Clan Donald. The title was forfeited to James IV in 1493 and is now held by the eldest son of the sovereign
  • magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
  • main-topsail schooner — a two-masted or three-masted schooner having square topsails on the foremast and mainmast: a jackass brig or jackass bark.
  • make up for lost time — compensate for past inaction
  • metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
  • multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
  • national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
  • naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
  • nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
  • old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • past its sell-by date — the last date on which perishable food should be sold, usually established with some allowance for home storage under refrigeration. Compare shelf life.
  • payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
  • peephole optimisation — (compiler)   A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • picture quality scale — (graphics)   (PQS) A system for rating image quality based upon features of images that affect their perception by the human eye, rather than the traditional signal-to-noise ratio which examines differences for every single pixel.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
  • plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
  • populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
  • prince rupert's metal — a brass composed of from about 60 to 85 percent copper and about 15 to 40 percent zinc, used to imitate gold.
  • private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
  • processor direct slot — (hardware)   (PDS) Apple Computer's name for a local bus connection. Most Macintoshes have only one PDS connector. Different Apple computers have different PDS specifications.
  • projection television — a television picture display system consisting of a special receiver and an optical system that projects an enlarged picture on a screen.
  • public address system — loudspeaker
  • public health service — the agency that is responsible for the health of the general public
  • public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
  • pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
  • 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
  • pulse-code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
  • pulse-time modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier is modulated to produce a series of pulses timed to transmit the amplitude and pitch of a signal. Abbr.: PTM.
  • put sb in their place — If you put someone in their place, you show them that they are less important or clever than they think they are.
  • ralph roister doister — a play (1553?) by Nicholas Udall: the earliest known English comedy.
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