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18-letter words containing i, r, a, t, o, n

  • fringe-toed lizard — an iguanid lizard, Uma notata, of sandy deserts of the western U.S. and Mexico, having a wedge-shaped snout and toes fringed with long, pointed scales.
  • front organization — business: cover-up
  • ftp software, inc. — (company)   Developers of the original PC/TCP Packet Driver specification. Address: 26 Princess St. Wakefield, MA 01880-3004. Telephone: +1 (617) 246 0900.
  • fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
  • functional program — (language)   A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
  • funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
  • gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
  • garbage collection — (programming)   (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
  • garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)
  • gastroenterologist — the study of the structure, functions, and diseases of digestive organs.
  • generating station — a power station
  • genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
  • 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.
  • gilbert and george — a team of artists, Gilbert Proesch, Italian, born 1942, and George Passmore, British, born 1943: noted esp for their photomontages and performance works
  • going to jerusalem — musical chairs.
  • golden gate bridge — a bridge connecting N California with San Francisco peninsula. 4200-foot (1280-meter) center span.
  • good samaritan law — a law that exempts from legal liability persons, sometimes only physicians, who give reasonable aid to strangers in grave physical distress.
  • grampian mountains — a mountain system of central Scotland, extending from the southwest to the northeast and separating the Highlands from the Lowlands. Highest peak: Ben Nevis, 1344 m (4408 ft)
  • granulation tissue — tissue formed in ulcers and in early wound healing and repair, composed largely of newly growing capillaries and so called from its irregular surface in open wounds; proud flesh.
  • gravitational lens — a heavy, dense body, as a galaxy, that lies along our line of sight to a more distant object, as a quasar, and whose gravitational field refracts the light of that object, splitting it into multiple images as seen from the earth.
  • gravitational mass — the mass of a body as measured by its gravitational attraction for other bodies.
  • gravitational pull — force of gravity
  • gravitational wave — (in general relativity) a propagating wave of gravitational energy produced by accelerating masses, especially during catastrophic events, as the gravitational collapse of massive stars.
  • great expectations — a novel (1861) by Charles Dickens.
  • grosse pointe park — a city in SE Michigan, near Detroit.
  • gyromagnetic ratio — the ratio of the magnetic moment of a rotating charged particle to its angular momentum.
  • half-open interval — a set of numbers between two given numbers but including only one endpoint.
  • hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
  • heart-rate monitor — a machine that monitors or records a person's heart rate
  • helicopter station — a place where helicopters are kept in readiness for use
  • historical fiction — the genre of literature, film, etc., comprising narratives that take place in the past and are characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.
  • historical present — the present tense used in narrating a past event as if happening at the time of narration.
  • hold a reservation — If a hotel holds a reservation, it keeps a room for someone, and does not give it to someone else.
  • home entertainment — the aggregate of appliances, as stero systems, television, videocassette recorders, or computers, used for diversion in the home.
  • honour moderations — (at Oxford University) the first public examination, in which candidates are placed into one of three classes of honours
  • honourable mention — If something that you do in a competition is given an honourable mention, it receives special praise from the judges although it does not actually win a prize.
  • horizontal tasting — a tasting of wines from the same year but from different vineyards, producers, etc.
  • hot-water cylinder — a vertical cylindrical tank for storing hot water, esp an insulated one made of copper used in a domestic hot-water system
  • human rights group — a group that campaigns for human rights
  • hungarian notation — (language, convention)   A linguistic convention requiring one or more letters to be added to the start of variable names to denote scope and/or type. Hungarian Notation is mainly confined to Microsoft Windows programming environments, such as Microsoft C, C++ and Visual Basic. It was originally devised by Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian, who was a senior programmer at Microsoft for many years. He disliked the way that names in C programs gave no clue as to the type, leading to frequent programmer errors. According to legend, fellow programmers at Microsoft, on seeing the convoluted, vowel-less variable names produced by his scheme, said, "This might as well be in Greek - or even Hungarian!". They made up the name "Hungarian notation" (possibly with "reverse Polish notation" in mind). Hungarian Notation is not really necessary when using a modern strongly-typed language as the compiler warns the programmer if a variable of one type is used as if it were another type. It is less useful in object-oriented programming languages such as C++, where many variables are going to be instances of classes and so begin with "obj". In addition, variable names are essentially only comments, and thus are just as susceptible to becoming out-of-date and incorrect as any other comment. For example, if a signed short int becomes an unsigned long int, the variable name, and every use of it, should be changed to reflect its new type. A variable's name should describe the values it holds. Type and scope are aspects of this, but Hungarian Notation overemphasises their importance by allocating so much of the start of the name to them. Furthermore, type and scope information can be found from the variable's declaration. Ironically, this is particularly easy in the development environments in which Hungarian Notation is typically used.
  • hydroxytryptamines — Plural form of hydroxytryptamine.
  • hyperaldosteronism — aldosteronism.
  • hyperconcentration — the act of concentrating; the state of being concentrated.
  • hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
  • hyperproliferation — (biology) An abnormally high rate of proliferation of cells by rapid division.
  • hypersensitization — Photography. to treat (a film or emulsion) so as to increase its speed.
  • hypersexualisation — Alternative spelling of hypersexualization.
  • hypersexualization — The act or process of hypersexualizing.
  • hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
  • ifs, ands, or buts — a supposition; uncertain possibility: The future is full of ifs.
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