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15-letter words containing m, p, u

  • communist party — (in non-Communist countries) a political party advocating Communism
  • compendiousness — The state or quality of being compendious.
  • compound animal — any animal, such as most hydroids, corals, and bryozoans, composed of a number of individuals produced by budding from a single parent and usually so fused together that no demarcation is clearly distinguishable
  • compound engine — a steam engine in which the steam is expanded in more than one stage, first in a high-pressure cylinder and then in one or more low-pressure cylinders
  • compound flower — a flower head made up of many small flowers appearing as a single bloom, as in the daisy
  • compound magnet — a magnet consisting of two or more separate magnets placed together with like poles pointing in the same direction.
  • compound number — a quantity expressed in two or more different but related units
  • compton-burnett — Dame Ivy. 1884–1969, English novelist. Her novels include Men and Wives (1931) and Mother and Son (1955)
  • computationally — from a computational point of view
  • computer cookie — HTTP cookie
  • computer dating — the use of computers by dating agencies to match their clients
  • computer ethics — (philosophy)   Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?).
  • computer memory — memory (def 11).
  • computer screen — the working area on the monitor of a computer
  • computer system — a computer or a set of computers that works together
  • computer vision — a robot analogue of human vision in which information about the environment is received by one or more video cameras and processed by computer: used in navigation by robots, in the control of automated production lines, etc.
  • computer-phobia — a person who distrusts or is intimidated by computers.
  • computerisation — (chiefly, British) alternative spelling of computerization.
  • computerization — to control, perform, process, or store (a system, operation, or information) by means of or in an electronic computer or computers.
  • consumption tax — a tax, as a sales tax, levied on consumer goods or services at the time of sale.
  • contemporaneous — If two events or situations are contemporaneous, they happen or exist during the same period of time.
  • corpus callosum — the band of white fibres that connects the cerebral hemispheres in mammals
  • corpus striatum — a striped mass of white and grey matter situated in front of the thalamus in each cerebral hemisphere
  • countercampaign — a campaign responding to another campaign
  • counterexamples — Plural form of counterexample.
  • country bumpkin — an awkward, simple, rustic person
  • cryptosporidium — any parasitic sporozoan protozoan of the genus Cryptosporidium, species of which are parasites of birds and animals and can be transmitted to humans, causing severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea (cryptosporidiosis)
  • culture complex — a group of culture traits all interrelated and dominated by one essential trait: Nationalism is a culture complex.
  • customer appeal — attractiveness to customers
  • deputy minister — (in Canada) the senior civil servant in a government department
  • draughtsmanship — (British) alternative spelling of draftsmanship.
  • dumpster diving — the practice of foraging in garbage that has been put out on the street in dumpsters, garbage cans, etc., for discarded items that may still be valuable, useful, or fixable.
  • durchkomponiert — having a different tune for each section rather than having repeated melodies
  • dutchman's-pipe — a climbing vine, Aristolochia durior, of the birthwort family, having large, heart-shaped leaves and brownish-purple flowers of a curved form suggesting a tobacco pipe.
  • e pluribus unum — one out of many: the motto of the USA
  • east massapequa — a town on SW Long Island, in SE New York.
  • eclipse plumage — the dull plumage developed in some brightly colored birds after the breeding season.
  • edmund randolph — A(sa) Philip, 1889–1979, U.S. labor leader: president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters 1925–68.
  • edriophthalmous — (of certain crustaceans) having stalkless eyes
  • emperor penguin — large Antarctic penguin
  • enantiomorphous — Of or pertaining to enantiomorphs or enantiomorphism; enantiomorphic.
  • entrepreneurism — Synonym of entrepreneurialism.
  • enumerated type — (programming)   (Or "enumeration") A type which includes in its definition an exhaustive list of possible values for variables of that type. Common examples include Boolean, which takes values from the list [true, false], and day-of-week which takes values [Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday]. Enumerated types are a feature of strongly typed languages, including C and Ada. Characters, (fixed-size) integers and even floating-point types could be (but are not usually) considered to be (large) enumerated types.
  • euphemistically — In a euphemistic manner.
  • family grouping — a system, used usually in the infant school, of grouping children of various ages together, esp for project work
  • food supplement — a substance designed to make up for a deficiency in one's diet
  • full employment — all of workforce is employed
  • full-moon maple — Japanese maple.
  • fuzzy computing — fuzzy logic
  • get one's lumps — a piece or mass of solid matter without regular shape or of no particular shape: a lump of coal.
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