18-letter words containing i, s, t, a
- aluminium sulphate — a white crystalline salt used in the paper, textile, and dyeing industries and in the purification of water. Formula: Al2(SO4)3
- ammonium phosphate — monoammonium phosphate.
- anaphylactic shock — a severe, sometimes fatal, reaction to a substance to which a person has an extreme sensitivity, often involving respiratory difficulty and circulation failure
- andrew file system — (operating system, storage) (AFS) The distributed file system of the Andrew Project, adopted by the OSF as part of their Distributed Computing Environment.
- angiotensinogenase — (enzyme) renin.
- anthropomorphising — Present participle of anthropomorphise.
- anti-commercialism — the principles, practices, and spirit of commerce.
- anti-establishment — opposed to established authority
- anti-masonic party — a former political party (1826–35) that opposed Freemasonry in civil affairs.
- anti-miscegenation — marriage or cohabitation between two people from different racial groups, especially, in the U.S., between a black person and a white person: In 1968 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that state laws prohibiting miscegenation were unconstitutional.
- anti-scholasticism — narrow adherence to traditional teachings, doctrines, or methods.
- anticholinesterase — any of a group of substances that inhibit the action of cholinesterase
- antidiscrimination — (legal) Opposing or disallowing discrimination.
- antiferromagnetism — the phenomenon exhibited by substances that resemble paramagnetic substances in the value of their relative permeability but that behave like ferromagnetic substances when their temperature is varied
- antipatheticalness — The state or quality of being antipathetical.
- antiprostaglandins — Plural form of antiprostaglandin.
- antiscorbutic acid — vitamin C
- antisegregationist — opposed to the segregation of different races in any human activity
- antivaccinationist — One who is opposed to the practice of vaccination.
- antivirus software — (tool) Programs to detect and remove computer viruses. The simplest kind scans executable files and boot blocks for a list of known viruses. Others are constantly active, attempting to detect the actions of general classes of viruses. antivirus software should always include a regular update service allowing it to keep up with the latest viruses as they are released.
- antivivisectionist — a person who is opposed to vivisection
- aperture synthesis — an array of radio telescopes used in radio astronomy to simulate a single large-aperture telescope. Some such instruments use movable dishes while others use fixed dishes
- aphrodite of melos — a Greek statue of Venus in marble, c200 b.c., found in 1820 on Melos and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- apostolic delegate — a representative of the pope sent to countries that do not have full or regular diplomatic relations with the Holy See
- apparatus criticus — textual notes, list of variant readings, etc, relating to a document, esp in a scholarly edition of a text
- appellate division — the section of a court that hears appeals, sometimes existing as an intermediate court between a trial court and a court of last resort.
- application server — 1.
A designer's or developer's suite of software that helps programmers isolate the business logic in their programs from the platform-related code. Application servers can handle all of the application logic and connectivity found in client-server applications. Many application servers also offer features such as transaction management, clustering and failover, and load balancing; nearly all offer ODBC support. 2. Production programs run on a mid-sized computer that handle all application operations between browser-based computers and an organisation's back-end business applications or databases. The application server works as a translator, allowing, for example, a customer with a browser to search an online retailer's database for pricing information. 3. The device on which application server software runs. Application Service Providers offer commercial access to such devices. - applied kinematics — kinematics (def 2).
- arbitration clause — a clause in a contract laying down that disputes between the parties should be settled by arbitration
- aristotelian logic — the logical theories of Aristotle as developed in the Middle Ages, concerned mainly with syllogistic reasoning: traditional as opposed to modern or symbolic logic
- aristotles-lantern — a complex arrangement of muscles and calcareous teeth and plates forming an eversible organ in most echinoids, functioning in mastication.
- arkansas toothpick — a bowie knife or similar sharp knifelike implement.
- arm's-length price — a price of a transaction agreed in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved
- arsenic trisulfide — a yellow or red crystalline substance, As 2 S 3 , occurring in nature as the mineral orpiment, and used as a pigment (king's yellow) and in pyrotechnics.
- as near as damn it — as near as possible; very near
- asciibetical order — (jargon, programming) /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a".
- aseptic meningitis — a mild form of meningitis usually caused by one of several viruses, characterized by headache, fever, and neck stiffness.
- asiatic black bear — a bear, Selenarctos thibetanus, of central and E Asia, whose coat is black with a pale V-shaped mark on the chest
- assignment problem — (mathematics, algorithm) (Or "linear assignment") Any problem involving minimising the sum of C(a, b) over a set P of pairs (a, b) where a is an element of some set A and b is an element of set B, and C is some function, under constraints such as "each element of A must appear exactly once in P" or similarly for B, or both. For example, the a's could be workers and the b's projects. The problem is "linear" because the "cost function" C() depends only on the particular pairing (a, b) and is independent of all other pairings.
- associate director — a person who is joined with one or more other directors in an enterprise, business, etc, having equal or nearly equal status
- associated company — a company which is largely controlled by its parent company because the latter owns anything up to 50% of the shares
- association cortex — any of the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain connected by numerous nerve fibers to all parts of both cerebral hemispheres and coordinating such higher activities as learning and reasoning.
- associative cortex — the part of the cortex that does not have direct connections to the senses or motor system and is thought to be involved in higher mental processes
- associative memory — content addressable memory
- assortative mating — the reproductive pairing of individuals that have more traits in common than would likely be the case if mating were random (contrasted with disassortative mating).
- assumption of risk — Assumption of risk is the practice of paying for minor losses yourself, but protecting against catastrophic losses by buying insurance cover.
- ast research, inc. — (company) A company, formed some time before 1980, that was a leading personal computer manufacturer. AST developed desktop computers, mobile computers, and servers that were sold in more than 100 countries worldwide. In January 1999 the name and intellectual property were acquired by a new company named AST Computers, LLC. As of 2000-03-02 it was trading as ARI Service.
- astrological chart — map of constellations at certain time
- astrometric binary — a binary star that can be recognized as such because of its undulating proper motion.
- astronomical clock — a complex clock showing astronomical phenomena, such as the phases of the moon