24-letter words containing l, a, i, n, e
- bull information systems — (company) A multinational I.T. group based in Europe with 21,000 people and operations in more than 85 countries. In 1997, Bull earned revenues of over $4 billion, including over 65% outside of France, its country of origin. The company is ranked as the third largest systems integrator in Europe.
- business systems analyst — (job) A person who works directly with management and users to analyse, specify, and design business applications. The Business Systems Analyst develops detailed functional, system, and program specifications using structured design methodologies and CASE tools. He must have strong business sense and communications skills. He works with both the information systems team and the strategic planning business group.
- butylated hydroxyanisole — Chemistry, Pharmacology. BHA.
- caeremoniale episcoporum — the liturgical book, used by bishops, containing regulations and prescriptions that are authoritative in matters not covered in the missal or other service books.
- californian spangled cat — a breed of short-haired cat with a spotted coat, bred in California to resemble a leopard in appearance
- canonical encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (CER) A restricted variant of BER for producing unequivocal transfer syntax for data structures described by ASN.1. Whereas BER gives choices as to how data values may be encoded, CER and DER select just one encoding from those allowed by the basic encoding rules, eliminating all of the options. They are useful when the encodings must be preserved, e.g. in security exchanges. CER and DER differ in the set of restrictions that they place on the encoder. The basic difference between CER and DER is that DER uses definitive length form and CER uses indefinite length form. Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1. See also PER.
- carbamylchloride choline — carbachol.
- cast pearls before swine — to present something of great interest or value to someone incapable of appreciating it
- cellular multiprocessing — (architecture, parallel) (CMP) The partitioning of processors into separate computing environments running different operating systems. The term cellular multiprocessing appears to have been coined by Unisys, who are developing a system where computers communicate as clustered machines through a high speed bus, rather than through communication protocols such as TCP/IP. The Unisys system is based on Intel processors, initially the Pentium II Xeon and moving on to the 64-bit Merced processors later in 1999. It will be scalable from four up to 32 processors, which can be clustered or partitioned in various ways. For example a sixteen processor system could be configured as four Windows NT systems (each functioning as a four-processor symmetric multiprocessing system), or an 8-way NT and 8-way Unix system. Supported operating systems will be Windows NT, SCO's Unixware 7.0, Unisys' SVR4 Unix and possibly the OS2200 and MCP-AS mainframe operating systems (with the assistance of Unisys' own dedicated chipset).
- central african republic — a landlocked country of central Africa: joined with Chad as a territory of French Equatorial Africa in 1910; became an independent republic in 1960; a parliamentary monarchy (1976–79); consists of a huge plateau, mostly savanna, with dense forests in the south; drained chiefly by the Shari and Ubangi Rivers. Official language: French; Sango is the national language. Religion: Christian and animist. Currency: franc. Capital: Bangui. Pop: 5 166 510 (2013 est). Area: 622 577 sq km (240 376 sq miles)
- cerebrospinal meningitis — an acute infectious form of meningitis caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, characterized by high fever, skin rash, delirium, stupor, and sometimes coma
- cerebrovascular accident — a sudden interruption of the blood supply to the brain caused by rupture of an artery in the brain (cerebral haemorrhage) or the blocking of a blood vessel, as by a clot of blood (cerebral occlusion)
- coal-fired power station — a power station that generates electricity by the burning of coal
- cog in the machine/wheel — If you describe someone as a cog in a machine or wheel, you mean that they are a small part of a large organization or group.
- colony collapse disorder — a pathological condition affecting a large number of honeybee colonies, in which various stresses may lead to the abrupt disappearance of worker bees from the hive, leaving only the queen and newly hatched bees behind and thus causing the colony to stop functioning. Abbreviation: CCD.
- command-line interpreter — command interpreter
- common information model — (standard) (CIM) An open systems management standard driven by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
- communications satellite — an artificial satellite used to relay radio, television, and telephone signals around the earth, usually in geostationary orbit
- compensatory lengthening — the lengthening of a vowel when a following consonant is weakened or lost, as the change from Old English niht [nikht] /nɪxt/ (Show IPA) to night [nahyt] /naɪt/ (Show IPA) with loss of [kh] /x/ (Show IPA) and lengthening of [i] /ɪ/ (Show IPA) to a vowel that eventually became [ahy] /aɪ/ (Show IPA).
- compiler target language — (CTL) The intermediate language used by the ALICE parallel machine.
- complement fixation test — a serological test for detecting the presence of a specific antibody or antigen, used in the diagnosis of syphilis, etc
- complement-fixation test — a test for diagnosing an infectious disease by detecting the presence of antibody in the blood, based on the fixing of a known quantity of complement to the antigen being tested and the specific antibody that combines with it. Abbreviation: CFT.
- complexometric titration — a titration in which a coloured complex is formed, usually by the use of a chelating agent, such as EDTA, the end point being marked by a sharp decrease in the concentration of free metal ions
- computational complexity — (algorithm) The number of steps or arithmetic operations required to solve a computational problem. One of the three kinds of complexity.
- computer design language — (language) An ALGOL-like language for computer design.
- confederate memorial day — a day set aside in the South to pay tribute to those who served with the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. It is observed on April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; on May 10 in North Carolina and South Carolina; on May 30 in Virginia; and on June 3 in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
- congestive heart failure — heart failure characterized by weakness, breathlessness, and abnormal congestion in the circulatory system, esp. in the lungs or lower legs
- consonantal alliteration — the use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word or each stressed syllable in a line of verse, as in around the rock the ragged rascal ran
- constant linear velocity — (storage) (CLV) A way of controlling the rotation of the disks in a disk drive in which the linear velocity of the disk surface relative to the read/write heads is kept constant. In order to achieve constant linear velocity, the disk must rotate faster (at a higher angular velocity) when reading or writing tracks closer to the centre. Having a constant linear read/write speed along the track means that the electrical signal to and from the heads has a constant data rate (bits per second), thus simplifying the timing of the drive electronics somewhat. However, rotating at less than the maximum possible rate sacrifices some potential performance compared to the alternative, constant angular velocity. Also, varying the rate causes more vibration and consumes more energy.
- constantinopolitan creed — a formal statement of the chief tenets of Christian belief, adopted by the first Nicene Council.
- consultant paediatrician — a paediatrician who has attained the rank of consultant
- cooperative multitasking — (parallel, operating system) A form of multitasking where it is the responsibility of the currently running task to give up the processor to allow other tasks to run. This contrasts with pre-emptive multitasking where the task scheduler periodically suspends the running task and restarts another. Cooperative multitasking requires the programmer to place calls at suitable points in his code to allow his task to be descheduled which is not always easy if there is no obvious top-level main loop or some routines run for a long time. If a task does not allow itself to be descheduled all other tasks on the system will appear to "freeze" and will not respond to user action. The advantage of cooperative multitasking is that the programmer knows where the program will be descheduled and can make sure that this will not cause unwanted interaction with other processes. Under pre-emptive multitasking, the scheduler must ensure that sufficient state for each process is saved and restored that they will not interfere. Thus cooperative multitasking can have lower overheads than pre-emptive multitasking because of the greater control it offers over when a task may be descheduled. Cooperative multitasking is used in RISC OS, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh System 7.
- cost-of-living allowance — an additional payment which takes account of the cost of living
- council of nationalities — the legislature of the former Soviet Union and its successor states, consisting of an upper house (Soviet of the Union or Council of the Union) whose delegates are elected on the basis of population, and a lower house (Soviet of Nationalities or Council of Nationalities) whose delegates are elected to represent the various nationalities.
- data definition language — (language, database) (DDL) 1. A language enabling the structure and instances of a database to be defined in a human-, and machine-readable form. See also Data manipulation language (DML). 2. A specification language for databases, based on the entity-relationship model. It is used in the Eli compiler-compiler to manage type definitions.
- dead white european male — a man whose importance and talents may have been exaggerated because he belonged to a historically dominant gender and ethnic group
- decentralized processing — the use of word processing or data processing units in stand-alone or localized situations
- definite relative clause — a relative clause with a definite relative pronoun as subordinating word, as that they said in We heard the things that they said.
- destructive distillation — the decomposition of a complex substance, such as wood or coal, by heating it in the absence of air and collecting the volatile products
- developmental disability — a disability, as mental retardation or cerebral palsy, that begins at an early age and continues indefinitely, leading to substantial handicap.
- dicyclopentadienyl metal — ferrocene (def 2).
- differential association — a theory that criminal and deviant behavior is learned through close and frequent association with criminal or deviant behavior patterns, norms, and values.
- differential coefficient — derivative (def 6).
- digital switched network — (communications) (DSN) The completely digital version of the PSTN.
- diphenylaminechlorarsine — adamsite.
- disestablishmentarianism — a person who favors the separation of church and state, especially the withdrawal of special rights, status, and support granted an established church by a state; an advocate of disestablishing a state church.
- display screen equipment — Visual Display Unit
- domain-specific language — (language) A machine-processable language whose terms are derived from a domain model and that is used for the definition of components or software architectures supporting that domain. A domain-specific language is often used as input to an application generator.
- domestic relations court — in some states, a court with jurisdiction over matters involving relations within the family or household, as between husband and wife or parent and child
- domestic-relations court — court of domestic relations.