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21-letter words containing i, s, o, p, e, r

  • modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
  • naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
  • negative prescription — the barring of adverse claims to property, etc, after a specified period of time has elapsed, allowing the possessor to acquire title
  • nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
  • old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
  • one-point perspective — a mathematical system for representing three-dimensional objects and space on a two-dimensional surface by means of intersecting lines that are drawn vertically and horizontally and that radiate from one point (one-point perspective) two points (two-point perspective) or several points on a horizon line as perceived by a viewer imagined in an arbitrarily fixed position.
  • 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.
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • opposite-sex marriage — (broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage: Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times. See Word Story at the current entry.
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • 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.
  • pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
  • percussion instrument — a musical instrument, as the drum, cymbal, triangle, xylophone, or piano, that is struck to produce a sound, as distinguished from string or wind instruments.
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • persistence of memory — a painting (1931) by Salvador Dali.
  • persistence of vision — the retention of a visual image for a short period of time after the removal of the stimulus that produced it: the phenomenon that produces the illusion of movement when viewing motion pictures.
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
  • phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
  • pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
  • political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
  • pomp and circumstance — ceremony
  • populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
  • positive prescription — the uninterrupted possession of property over a stated period of time, after which a right or title is acquired
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
  • potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
  • poweropen association — An independent body established to promote, and test conformance with, the PowerOpen Environment (POE).
  • powersoft corporation — (company)   A leading vendor of client/server application development tools. In February 1994, Watcom became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Powersoft Corporation which merged with Sybase on 13 February 1995. In April 1995, the new company is the fastest growing top-ten software company and the seventh largest software company in the world. Headquarters: Concord, Massachusetts, USA.
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
  • precision engineering — design of complex and specialized machines
  • preexisting condition — A preexisting condition is a medical condition already suffered by a proposer before the starting date of an insurance policy.
  • prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
  • premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
  • president pro tempore — a senator, usually a senior member of the majority party, who is chosen to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president.
  • price competitiveness — pricing goods or services so that they are competitive with the prices of other companies
  • probable maximum loss — Probable maximum loss is the maximum amount of loss that can be expected under normal circumstances.
  • processor direct slot — (hardware)   (PDS) Apple Computer's name for a local bus connection. Most Macintoshes have only one PDS connector. Different Apple computers have different PDS specifications.
  • professional services — (job)   A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
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