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21-letter words containing l, a, r, y

  • mechanical metallurgy — the branch of metallurgy dealing with the response of metals to applied forces.
  • mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • mucopolysaccharidosis — Any of a group of metabolic disorders caused by the absence or malfunction of lysosomal enzymes needed to break down glycosaminoglycans.
  • multichannel analyser — an electronic instrument, such as a pulse height analyser, that splits an input waveform into a large number of channels in accordance with a particular parameter of the input
  • multilayer perceptron — A network composed of more than one layer of neurons, with some or all of the outputs of each layer connected to one or more of the inputs of another layer. The first layer is called the input layer, the last one is the output layer, and in between there may be one or more hidden layers.
  • myocardial infarction — heart attack. Abbreviation: MI.
  • new year's resolution — If you make a New Year's resolution, you make a decision at the beginning of a year to start doing something or to stop doing something.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • nitrosylsulfuric acid — a clear, straw-colored, oily, corrosive liquid, HNO 5 S, used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes.
  • north atlantic treaty — the treaty (1949) signed by 12 countries, providing for the establishment of NATO.
  • olympic national park — a national park in NW Washington. 1323 sq. mi. (3425 sq. km).
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • 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.
  • orthogonal trajectory — the locus of a point whose path cuts each curve of a family of curves at right angles.
  • otorhinolaryngologist — (medicine) Doctor specializing in otorhinolaryngology, the study of ear, nose, and throat.
  • parliamentary inquiry — a question asked of the presiding officer of a parliament in relation to parliamentary law
  • 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.
  • pellitory-of-the-wall — an urticaceous plant, P. diffusa, of the S and W European genus Parietaria, which grows in crevices and has long narrow leaves and small pink flowers
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
  • picture quality scale — (graphics)   (PQS) A system for rating image quality based upon features of images that affect their perception by the human eye, rather than the traditional signal-to-noise ratio which examines differences for every single pixel.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • pneumoencephalography — encephalography.
  • politically incorrect — not politically correct; potentially offensive to a particular group of people: politically incorrect jokes.
  • polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
  • 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
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
  • privacy enhanced mail —
  • psychological primary — one of a set of perceived colours (red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white) that can be used to characterize all other perceived colours
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • public address system — loudspeaker
  • public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
  • pulmonary circulation — the circulation of blood from the heart to the lungs for oxygenation and back to the heart.
  • pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
  • pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
  • quadralay corporation — (company)   The developers of GWHIS. Telephone: +1 512-346-9199. Fax: +1 512-346-8990.
  • quality point average — grade point average.
  • rayleigh distribution — (mathematics)   A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
  • real estate liability — Real estate liability is liability for risks that come from owning real estate.
  • real operating system — (operating system, abuse)   The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
  • rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
  • redevelopment company — a private corporation or a public agency that stimulates the improvement of land, as through a building project subject to certain designs and controls, by financing, selling, or leasing such real estate to interested buyers or lessees.
  • referential integrity — (database)   A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database. For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.
  • relative permeability — the ratio of the permeability of a medium to that of free space
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