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22-letter words containing n, a, p, o

  • federal crop insurance — insurance against the failure of certain crops provided to farmers and producers by the Federal Government
  • ferdinand von zeppelin — Count Ferdinand von [fer-di-nahnt fuh n] /ˈfɛr dɪˌnɑnt fən/ (Show IPA), 1838–1917, German general and aeronaut: designer and manufacturer of the zeppelin.
  • field emission display — (hardware)   (FED) A type of flat panel display in which field emitting cathodes bombard a phosphor coating causing it to emit light. A field emission display is similar to a cathode ray tube but only a few millimeters thick. They use a large array of fine metal tips or carbon nanotubes (which are the most efficient electron emitters known), to emit electrons through a process known as field emission. Many of these are behind each phosphor dot so FEDs do not display dead pixels like LCDs even if 20% of the emitters fail. Sony is researching FED because it is the flat-panel technology that comes closest to matching the picture of a CRT.
  • file transfer protocol — (FTP) A client-server protocol which allows a user on one computer to transfer files to and from another computer over a TCP/IP network. Also the client program the user executes to transfer files. It is defined in STD 9, RFC 959. See also anonymous FTP, FSP, TFTP.
  • fixed point combinator — (mathematics)   (Y) The name used in combinatory logic for the fixed point function, also written as "fix".
  • flocculent precipitate — a woolly-looking precipitate, as aluminum hydroxide formed by the addition of ammonia to an aluminum-salt solution.
  • for no apparent reason — If you say that something happens for no apparent reason, you cannot understand why it happens.
  • forced place insurance — Forced place insurance is insurance taken out by a bank or creditor on an uninsured debtor's behalf on a property that is being used as collateral.
  • functional programming — (programming)   (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
  • galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
  • geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
  • give a person what for — to punish or reprimand a person severely
  • glossopharyngeal nerve — either of the ninth pair of cranial nerves, consisting of motor fibers that innervate the muscles of the pharynx, the soft palate, and the parotid glands, and of sensory fibers that conduct impulses to the brain from the pharynx, the middle ear, and the posterior third of the tongue.
  • go through one's paces — to show one's abilities, skills, etc.
  • government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
  • gravitational collapse — the final stage of stellar evolution in which a star collapses to a final state, as a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, when the star's nuclear reactions no longer generate enough pressure to balance the attractive force of gravity.
  • gross national product — the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced in a country during one year. Abbreviation: GNP.
  • guanosine triphosphate — GTP.
  • hague peace conference — a meeting held at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899, that established The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration.
  • help a person off with — to assist a person in the removal of (clothes)
  • hepatitis non-a, non-b — a disease of the liver that is clinically indistinguishable from hepatitis B but is caused by a retrovirus or retroviruslike agent.
  • home improvement grant — a government grant for house improvements such as insulation, adding a bathroom, or urgent repairs
  • horizontal application — An application program common to different business processes, e.g. office automation. Compare vertical application.
  • horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
  • hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
  • ice-making compartment — a part of a refrigerator in which ice is made
  • immigration department — the government department responsible for laws regarding immigrants and immigration
  • imperative programming — imperative language
  • in anticipation of sth — If something is done in anticipation of an event, it is done because people believe that event is going to happen.
  • in the lap of the gods — If you say that a situation is in the lap of the gods, you mean that its success or failure depends entirely on luck or on things that are outside your control.
  • incremental repetition — repetition, with variation, of a refrain or other part of a poem, especially a ballad.
  • independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
  • independent contractor — self-employed or freelance worker
  • information processing — processing of information, especially the handling of information by computers in accordance with strictly defined systems of procedure.
  • initial program loader — (operating system)   (IPL) A bootstrap loader which loads the part of an operating system needed to load the remainder of the operating system.
  • intermetallic compound — a compound of two or more metals.
  • interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
  • interrogator-responsor — a radio or radar transceiver for sending a signal to a transponder and receiving and interpreting the reply.
  • isthmus of tehuantepec — the narrowest part of S Mexico, with the Bay of Campeche on the north coast and the Gulf of Tehuantepec (an inlet of the Pacific) on the south coast
  • jackpot winning ticket — a ticket that contains all the winning numbers in a lottery etc, allowing the owner of the ticket to claim the jackpot prize
  • java community process — (project)   (JCP) An organization controlled by Sun Microsystems to further the growth of the Java language and runtime. The JCP produces standards called Java Standard Requests, which are "requests" in the same sense as RFCs.
  • keep a person guessing — to let a person remain in a state of uncertainty
  • last call optimisation — (programming)   (Or "tail call optimisation") Discarding the immediate calling context (call stack frame) when the last action of a function or procedure, A, is to call another function or procedure, B. B will then return directly to A's caller, or possibly further up the call stack if the optimisation has been applied to several consecutive calls. Last call optimisation allows arbitrarily deep nesting of procedure calls without consuming memory to store useless environments. This is particularly useful in the special case of tail recursion optimisation, where a procedure's last action is to call itself (possibly indirectly).
  • left-handed compliment — an ambiguous compliment
  • love-hate relationship — If you have a love-hate relationship with someone or something, your feelings towards them change suddenly and often from love to hate.
  • magnetic dipole moment — a measure of the magnetic strength of a magnet or current-carrying coil, expressed as the torque per unit magnetic-flux density produced when the magnet or coil is set with its axis perpendicular to the magnetic field
  • magnetic pole strength — Electricity. a measure of the force exerted by one face of a magnet on a face of another magnet when both magnets are represented by equal and opposite poles. Symbol: m.
  • make one's flesh creep — to move slowly with the body close to the ground, as a reptile or an insect, or a person on hands and knees.
  • make/prove one's point — If you make your point or prove your point, you prove that something is true, either by arguing about it or by your actions or behaviour.
  • mind one's p's and q's — to be careful to behave correctly and use polite or suitable language
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