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24-letter words containing e, s, t, i, m, a

  • open system architecture — (operating system)   (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
  • operational requirements — (programming)   Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
  • organization and methods — a systematic examination of an organization's structure, procedures, management and control, with a view to determining its comparative efficiency in achieving defined organizational aims
  • people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
  • photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
  • physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
  • polymer matrix composite — A polymer matrix composite is a material consisting of a composite made stronger by adding fibers or particles to it.
  • potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
  • pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel)   A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • progressive assimilation — assimilation in which a preceding sound has an effect on a following one, as in shortening captain to cap'm rather than cap'n.
  • pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
  • quick-assembly furniture — furniture such as shelves and cupboards which you buy as a number of separate pieces and assemble yourself
  • rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
  • renewable term insurance — Renewable term insurance is term life insurance that may be renewed for another period without the policyholder needing to provide further evidence of their insurability.
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
  • reverse annuity mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
  • rocky mountain whitefish — mountain whitefish.
  • san bernardino mountains — mountain range in S Calif., south of the Mojave Desert: highest peak, 11,502 ft (3,506 m)
  • see someone hanged first — to refuse absolutely to do what one has been asked
  • senegambia confederation — an economic and political union (1982–89) between Senegal and The Gambia
  • sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
  • simultaneous translation — a form of translation in which the interpreter translates into the target language as quickly as possible while the speaker is still speaking in the source language
  • sodium hexametaphosphate — See under Calgon.
  • solution based modelling — (SBM) A software development process described in the book "Developing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh" written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, published by Addison Wesley in 1992.
  • special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
  • split image range finder — a range finder in which opposing halves of a split field move relative to each other and coincide when the object centered in the field is in focus.
  • st.-bruno-de-montarville — a town in S Quebec, in E Canada, near Montreal.
  • stab someone in the back — If you say that someone has stabbed you in the back, you mean that they have done something very harmful to you when you thought that you could trust them. You can refer to an action of this kind as a stab in the back.
  • stratified random sample — a random sample of a population in which the population is first divided into distinct subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then taken separately from each stratum.
  • take someone at his word — to assume that someone means, or will do, what he or she says
  • tear someone off a strip — to rebuke (someone) angrily
  • the last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
  • the ravages of something — the destructive effects of something
  • the realm of possibility — If you say that something is not beyond the realms of possibility, you mean that it is possible.
  • the whole shooting match — everything; the whole lot
  • thompson sub-machine-gun — a .45 calibre sub-machine-gun
  • to keep something at bay — If you keep something or someone at bay, or hold them at bay, you prevent them from reaching, attacking, or affecting you.
  • to lay something to rest — If you lay something such as fears or rumours to rest or if you put them to rest, you succeed in proving that they are not true.
  • to make up for lost time — If someone is making up for lost time, they are doing something actively and with enthusiasm because they have not had the opportunity to do it before or when they were younger.
  • to pick someone's brains — If you pick someone's brains, you ask them to help you with a problem because they know more about the subject than you.
  • trisodium orthophosphate — a sodium salt of orthophosphoric acid having the formula Na3PO4
  • tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
  • uniform resource locater — Uniform Resource Locator
  • uniform resource locator — (web)   (URL, previously "Universal") A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. Other types of object are described below. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hypertext link which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer). Here are some example URLs: http://w3.org/default.html http://acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif http://foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator http://w3.org/default.html#Introduction ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz mailto:[email protected] news:alt.hypertext telnet://dra.com The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or protocol. Commonly implemented schemes include: ftp, http (web), gopher or WAIS. The "file" scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same host. Other less commonly used schemes include news, telnet or mailto (e-mail). The part after the colon is interpreted according to the access scheme. In general, two slashes after the colon introduce a hostname (host:port is also valid, or for FTP user:[email protected] or [email protected]). The port number is usually omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme, e.g. port 80 for HTTP. For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a pathname which is usually related to the pathname of a file on the server. The file can contain any type of data but only certain types are interpreted directly by most browsers. These include HTML and images in gif or jpeg format. The file's type is given by a MIME type in the HTTP headers returned by the server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also indicated by its filename extension. A file whose type is not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an external "viewer" application, e.g. a sound player. The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#". The later indicates a particular position within the specified document. Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are safe and may be transmitted unencoded. Other characters are encoded as a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. Space may also be encoded as "+". Standard SGML "&;" character entity encodings (e.g. "é") are also accepted when URLs are embedded in HTML. The terminating semicolon may be omitted if & is followed by a non-letter character.
  • united states of america — United States. Abbreviation: U.S.A., USA.
  • visual component library — (programming)   VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
  • ways and means committee — a standing committee of the US House of Representatives that supervises all financial legislation
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