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21-letter words containing g, r, e, n, s, h

  • loch ness monster bug — (humour)   (Or "Bugfoot") A bug which cannot be reproduced or has only been sighted by one person. Named after the mythical creature claimed to inhabit Loch Ness in Scotland.
  • majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
  • mengistu haile mariam — born 1937, Ethiopian political leader: head of state 1977–87; president 1987–91.
  • 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.
  • north east new guinea — the NE part of the former Australian Territory of New Guinea; now part of Papua New Guinea.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • 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
  • 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 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
  • 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.
  • 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
  • seeing/hearing things — If you say that someone is seeing or hearing things, you mean that they believe they are seeing or hearing something that is not really there.
  • single spanish burton — a tackle having a runner as well as the fall supporting the load, giving a mechanical advantage of three, neglecting friction.
  • something for nothing — If you say that someone is getting something for nothing, you disapprove of the fact that they are getting what they want without doing or giving anything in return.
  • sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
  • strike the right note — to behave appropriately
  • synchronized shifting — gear shifting in which the gears to be meshed are made to rotate at the same speed.
  • synchronized swimming — a sport growing out of water ballet in which swimmers, in solo, duet, and team efforts, complete various required figures by performing motions in relatively stationary positions, along with a freestyle competition, with the contestants synchronizing movements to music and being judged for body position, control, and the degree of difficulty of the moves.
  • the acting profession — actors considered as a group
  • the origin of species — (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) a treatise (1859) by Charles Darwin setting forth his theory of evolution.
  • the shipping forecast — a radio broadcast made by the BBC of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles
  • there's nothing to it — If you say 'There's nothing to it', 'There's not much to it', or 'That's all there is to it', you are emphasizing how simple you think something is.
  • to have green fingers — If someone has green fingers, they are very good at gardening and their plants grow well.
  • to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
  • undesirable discharge — a discharge under other than honorable conditions of a person from military service by administrative action.
  • weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
  • what price something? — what are the chances of something happening now?
  • whistling in the dark — If you say that someone is whistling in the dark, you mean that they are trying to remain brave and convince themselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems.
  • youth training scheme — (formerly, in Britain) a scheme, run by the Training Agency, to provide vocational training for unemployed 16–17-year-olds
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