23-letter words containing i, s, a, c
- grant-maintained school — a school funded directly by central government
- graphical kernel system — (graphics, standard) (GKS) The widely recognised standard ANSI X3.124 for graphical input/output. GKS is worked on by the ISO/IEC group JTC1/SC24. It provides applications programmers with standard methods of creating, manipulating, and displaying or printing computer graphics on different types of computer graphics output devices. It provides an abstraction to save programmers from dealing with the detailed capabilities and interfaces of specific hardware. GKS defines a basic two-dimensional graphics system with: uniform input and output primitives; a uniform interface to and from a GKS metafile for storing and transferring graphics information. It supports a wide range of graphics output devices including such as printers, plotters, vector graphics devices, storage tubes, refresh displays, raster displays, and microfilm recorders.
- greatest common divisor — the largest number that is a common divisor of a given set of numbers. Abbreviation: G.C.D.
- have struck/hit paydirt — If you say that someone has struck paydirt or has hit paydirt, you mean that they have achieved sudden success or gained a lot of money very quickly.
- have tickets on oneself — to be conceited
- heaviside unit function — the function that is zero for any number less than zero and that is 1 for any number greater than or equal to zero.
- heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
- hexagonal cross-section — If a kelly has a hexagonal cross-section, it has a surface area with six equal sides, when looked at as if has been sliced through.
- hire purchase agreement — an agreement between a seller and a buyer for the buyer to purchase something on hire purchase
- human rights campaigner — a person who campaigns for human rights
- icosidodecadodecahedron — A polyhedron having 44 faces, 60 vertices, 120 edges, 12 self intersected faces and 12 nonconvex faces.
- in a class of one's own — If someone is in a class of their own, they have more of a particular skill or quality than anyone else. If something is in a class of its own, it is better than any other similar thing.
- in sack cloth and ashes — sacking.
- in someone's bad graces — elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action: We watched her skate with effortless grace across the ice. Synonyms: attractiveness, charm, gracefulness, comeliness, ease, lissomeness, fluidity. Antonyms: stiffness, ugliness, awkwardness, clumsiness; klutziness.
- incontestability clause — a clause in a life-insurance or health-insurance policy stating that the insurer cannot contest the policy after a stated period of time.
- indirect discrimination — discrimination by means of rules, regulations or procedures that may appear to be neutral, but which actually discriminate against certain groups of people.
- industrial psychologist — a person who studies human behaviour and cognitive processes in relation to the working environment
- informatics corporation — (company) Renamed to Sterling Software Corp.
- inland marine insurance — insurance chiefly covering risks to goods and means of transportation involved in the transporting of goods overland or by inland waterways.
- interfascicular cambium — cambium that develops between the vascular bundles.
- internal reconstruction — the hypothetical reconstruction of an earlier stage of a language or of some part of it, as its phonology, by deductions from irregularities in its present structure, as the reconstruction of a stage in English when certain instances of r were related to s in a systematic way by comparing the pair was:were to other pairs, as lose:forlorn.
- irish christian brother — Brother of the Christian Schools (def 2).
- islamic fundamentalists — Muslims who believe in, advocate or support a conservative adherence to literal or traditional interpretations of the Qu'ran and the Sunnah
- joint test action group —
- katmai new instructions — Streaming SIMD Extensions
- kick against the pricks — to hurt oneself by struggling against something in vain
- kinetic theory of gases — a theory that the particles in a gas move freely and rapidly along straight lines but often collide, resulting in variations in their velocity and direction. Pressure is interpreted as arising from the impacts of these particles with the walls of a container.
- lackland air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW central Texas, SW of San Antonio.
- large-scale integration — LSI.
- laughlin air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW Texas, SE of Del Rio.
- lawrence livermore labs — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- least significant digit — the digit farthest to the right in a number. Abbreviation: LSD.
- light and shade surface — (in architectural shades and shadows) a surface in a plane tangent to the parallel rays from the theoretical light source, treated as a shade surface.
- like a headless chicken — disorganized and uncontrolled
- locally euclidean space — a topological space in which each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open set in a Euclidean space of specified dimension.
- lossy audio compression — (audio, compression) Any audio compression algorithm which does not retain every bit of data but only reproduces a signal that sounds more or less like the original. Examples are MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC.
- lymphoblastic leukaemia — a severe blood disorder in which abnormal leukocytes are identified as immature forms of lymphocytes
- magnetic field strength — that part of the magnetic induction that is determined at any point in space by the current density and displacement current at that point independently of the magnetic or other physical properties of the surrounding medium. Symbol: H.
- magnetic resonance scan — MR scan.
- magnetic susceptibility — the coefficient or set of coefficients of the magnetic intensity in any expression giving the components of magnetization as linear combinations of the components of magnetic intensity.
- martha washington chair — a chair of the 18th century having a high upholstered back, a low upholstered seat, and short arms resting on incurvate supports.
- mass sociogenic illness — a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to social factors, as social interaction within an environment.
- message digest function — one-way hash function
- micro assembly language — (language) (MAL) A microprogramming language with high-level syntax, used in the reference below. See also Mic-1, Mac-1.
- micropachycephalosaurus — A very small pachycephalosaurid, ornithischian dinosaur of the genus Micropachycephalosaurus.
- modern sequence dancing — a form of dancing in which ballroom dance steps are used as the basis of a wide variety of different dances typically performed in a sequence
- multimedia compact disc — (storage) (MMCD) A CD-ROM standard for storing 4.7 GB of data including video. MMCD is being developed by a large numer of computer manufacturers and is expected to be shipped in late 1996 or early 1997. Initially it will be aimed at the consumer market, then perhaps in CD-ROM format for computers, and maybe later on erasble CD.
- multiple-risk insurance — insurance that covers several risks
- national health service — In Britain, the National Health Service is the state system for providing medical care. It is paid for by taxes.
- national safety council — a non profit organization that promotes and ensures health and safety standards