24-letter words containing g, r, a, n
- interlocking directorate — a corporate directorate that includes one or more members who serve simultaneously in the directorates of other corporations.
- interventional radiology — an application of radiology that enables minimally invasive surgery to be performed with the aid of simultaneous radiological imaging of the field of operation within the body
- involuntary manslaughter — the unlawful but unintentional killing of a human being
- jam programming language — (language) (JPL) A string-based imperative language from JYACC Corporation, part of the JAM tool for developing screen (non-window) applications.
- jewish autonomous region — an autonomous region in the Khabarovsk territory of the Russian Federation in E Siberia. 13,900 sq. mi. (36,000 sq. km). Capital: Birobidzhan.
- knight in shining armour — If you refer to someone as a knight in shining armour, you mean that they are kind and brave, and likely to rescue you from a difficult situation.
- knowledge representation — The subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with designing and using systems for storing knowledge - facts and rules about some subject. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to represent. In order to manipulate this knowledge we must specify how the abstract conceptualisation is represented as a concrete data structure. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualisation.
- knowledge sharing effort — (project) An ARPA project developing techniques and methods for building large-scale knowledge bases which are sharable and reusable.
- lady washington geranium — show geranium.
- laryngotracheobronchitis — A respiratory disease, a form of croup.
- laugh in a person's face — to show open contempt or defiance towards a person
- legal expenses insurance — Legal expenses insurance is insurance coverage against expenses incurred when you need to seek legal advice or pay for a lawsuit.
- local government officer — an employee of a local council
- logical block addressing — (storage) (LBA) A hard disk sector addressing scheme used on all SCSI hard disks, and on ATA-2 conforming IDE hard disks. The addressing conversion is performed by the hard disk firmware. Prior to LBA, combined limitations of IBM PC BIOS and ATA restricted the useful capacity of IDE hard disks on IBM PCs and compatibles to 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 16 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 528 million bytes = 504 megabytes. Modern BIOSes select LBA mode automatically, and work around the 1024-cylinder BIOS limit by representing a hard disk to the OS as having e.g. half as many cylinders and twice as many heads. However, there is still an unbreakable BIOS disk size limit of 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 256 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 8 gigabytes, but modern OSes (including Windows 9x, Windows NT and Linux) are not affected by it, since they issue direct LBA-based calls, bypassing the BIOS hard disk services completely.
- long-spined sea scorpion — Cottus bubalis or Taurulus bubalis
- long-term care insurance — Long-term care insurance is insurance for people who may require long-term health or nursing care, and pays for things such as nursing homes and adult day care.
- low voltage differential — (hardware) (LVD) A method of driving SCSI cables that will be formalised in the SCSI-3 specifications. LVD uses less power than the current differential drive (HVD), is less expensive and will allow the higher speeds of Ultra-2 SCSI. LVD requires 3.3 Volts DC instead of 5 Volts DC for HVD.
- mach interface generator — (tool, programming) (MIG) An implementation of a subset of Matchmaker that generates C and C++ remote procedure call interfaces for interprocess communication between Mach tasks.
- magnetothermoelectricity — thermoelectricity induced or affected by a magnetic field.
- maker interchange format — (MIF) A language used to describe a FrameMaker document in a text file. MIF is used to exchange information between FrameMaker and other applications.
- mean length of utterance — the mean number of morphemes produced per sentence, used especially as a measure of child language development. Abbreviation: MLU.
- medium-scale integration — MSI.
- mitigating circumstances — conditions that lessen responsibility for a crime
- morning, noon, and night — If you say that something happens morning, noon and night, you mean that it happens all the time.
- network attached storage — (networking, storage) (NAS) Fixed disks, RAID arrays, and magnetic tape drives connected directly to a Storage Area Network (SAN) or other direct network connection. This is in contrast to a file server where the peripherals are connected to the network via a computer (the server).
- network operating system — (operating system) (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
- new england clam chowder — a thick chowder made from clams, potatoes, onions, sometimes salt pork, and milk or cream.
- new programming language — (language) (NEWP) A language which replaced ESPOL on the Burroughs Large System.
- nongonococcal urethritis — a widespread sexually transmitted infection of the urethra, caused by the parasite Chlamydia trachomatis, or the mycoplasm Ureaplasma urealyticum, characterized in males by painful urination and discharge from the penis and in females by frequent, painful urination and cervical erosion. Abbreviation: NGU.
- object-oriented language — object-oriented programming
- officers' training corps — part of the British Army which provides military leadership training to students at UK universities
- on average/on an average — You say on average or on an average to indicate that a number is the average of several numbers.
- on the right/wrong track — If you are on the right track, you are acting or progressing in a way that is likely to result in success. If you are on the wrong track, you are acting or progressing in a way that is likely to result in failure.
- one thing led to another — You say one thing led to another when you are explaining how something happened, but you do not really want to give the details or you think people will be able to imagine the details.
- optical signal processor — optical computing
- orbital angular momentum — the component of angular momentum of an electron in an atom or a nucleon in a nucleus, arising from its orbital motion rather than from its spin.
- 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
- orographic precipitation — precipitation caused by the lifting of moist air over a mountain barrier.
- other things being equal — If you say 'other things being equal' or 'all things being equal' when talking about a possible situation, you mean if nothing unexpected happens or if there are no other factors which affect the situation.
- parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
- parliamentary government — government by a body of cabinet ministers who are chosen from and responsible to the legislature and act as advisers to a nominal chief of state.
- plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
- 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.
- preparatory to doing sth — If one action is done preparatory to another, it is done before the other action, usually as preparation for it.
- pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications) (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
- privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
- professional programming — paranoid programming
- program information file — (file format) Under Windows, a file providing information on how a non-Windows application program should be run, including how much memory should be allocated to it and what graphics interface it requires.
- 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.
- progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.