20-letter words containing n, t, e, r
- infrared photography — photography using film with an emulsion that is sensitive to infrared light, enabling it to be used in misty weather, in darkened interiors, or at night. It has applications in aerial surveys, the detection of forgeries, etc
- inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
- innerspring mattress — a mattress with built-in coil springs
- instruction mnemonic — (programming) A word or acronym used in assembly language to represent a binary machine instruction operation code. Different processors have different instruction sets and therefore use a different set of mnemonics to represent them. E.g. ADD, B (branch), BLT (branch if less than), SVC, MOVE, LDR (load register).
- instruction prefetch — (architecture) A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- integration by parts — Mathematics. a method of evaluating an integral by use of the formula, ∫udv = uv − ∫vdu.
- integrity constraint — (database) A constraint (rule) that must remain true for a database to preserve data integrity. Integrity constraints are specified at database creation time and enforced by the database management system. Examples from a genealogical database would be that every individual must be their parent's child or that they can have no more than two natural parents.
- intelligence officer — a military officer responsible for collecting and processing data on hostile forces, weather, and terrain.
- intelligence service — the government department that is responsible for collecting and analyzing information about enemies
- intelligent terminal — (hardware) (or "smart terminal", "programmable terminal") A terminal that often contains not only a keyboard and screen, but also comes with a disk drive and printer, so it can perform limited processing tasks when not communicating directly with the central computer. Some can be programmed by the user to perform many basic tasks, including both arithmetic and logic operations. In some cases, when the user enters data, the data will be checked for errors and some type of report will be produced. In addition, the valid data that is entered may be stored on the disk, it will be transmitted over communication lines to the central computer. An intelligent terminal may have enough computing capability to draw graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behaviour of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using said devices as displays. The term once meant any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned above, is called a dumb terminal. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate". This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. Compare hook.
- intercalary meristem — meristem in the internode of a stem.
- interference pattern — a series of alternating dark and bright bands produced as a result of light interference.
- intermediate section — The intermediate section is the section of the borehole after the top hole, which has more consolidated rock.
- intermittent current — a direct current that is interrupted at intervals.
- internal hemorrhoids — Usually, hemorrhoids. Pathology. an abnormally enlarged vein mainly due to a persistent increase in venous pressure, occurring inside the anal sphincter of the rectum and beneath the mucous membrane (internal hemorrhoid) or outside the anal sphincter and beneath the surface of the anal skin (external hemorrhoid)
- internal respiration — the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the blood or lymph and the body cells
- international candle — candle (def 3b).
- international gothic — a style of Gothic art, especially painting, developed in Europe in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, chiefly characterized by details carefully delineated in a naturalistic manner, elongated and delicately modeled forms, the use of complex perspective, and an emphasis on the decorative or ornamental aspect of drapery, foliage, or setting.
- international master — a chess player of high ability but below the level of International Grand Master, as determined through specified types of international competitions.
- international orange — a shade of bright orange, highly visible at a great distance and in murky weather, used to color aircraft, airport towers and hangars, boats, etc., for safety or rescue purposes.
- international system — an internationally accepted coherent system of physical units, derived from the MKSA (meter-kilogram-second-ampere) system, using the meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela as the basic units (SI units) respectively of the fundamental quantities of length, mass, time, electric current, temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity. Abbreviation: SI.
- internationalisation — Alternative spelling of internationalization.
- internationalization — internationalisation
- interpersonal skills — skills that contribute to dealing successfully with other people
- interpersonal theory — the theory that personality development and behavior disorders are related to and determined by relationships between persons.
- interplanetary space — the region of space occurring around the sun and planets of the solar system. The density is normally negligible although cosmic rays, meteorites, gas clouds, etc, can occur
- intervening sequence — a noncoding segment in a length of DNA that interrupts a gene-coding sequence or nontranslated sequence, the corresponding segment being removed from the RNA copy before transcription.
- intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
- intestinal fortitude — courage; resoluteness; endurance; guts: to have intestinal fortitude.
- into/in cold storage — If you put an idea or plan into cold storage or in cold storage, you delay it for a while rather than acting on it as you originally intended.
- intravenous drug use — the injection of drugs intravenously
- intruder in the dust — a novel (1948) by William Faulkner.
- inventory adjustment — Inventory adjustments are increases or decreases made in inventory to account for theft, loss, breakages, and errors in the amount or number of items received.
- investment portfolio — the whole range of financial investments held by an individual investor or a financial organization
- islets of langerhans — biology: pancreatic cells
- isochronous transfer — isochronous
- isometric projection — a type of axonometric projection in which the object is shown with its three principal axes all equally tilted from the plane of viewing, with two of them usually tilted 30 degrees upward from the horizontal
- isosorbide dinitrate — a coronary vasodilator, C 6 H 8 N 2 O 8 , used in the prophylaxis and treatment of angina.
- j robert oppenheimer — J(ulius) Robert, 1904–67, U.S. nuclear physicist.
- japanese pagoda tree — pagoda tree.
- jasper national park — a national park in the Canadian Rockies in W Alberta, in SW Canada.
- java virtual machine — (language, architecture) (JVM) A specification for software which interprets Java programs that have been compiled into byte-codes, and usually stored in a ".class" file. The JVM instruction set is stack-oriented, with variable instruction length. Unlike some other instruction sets, the JVM's supports object-oriented programming directly by including instructions for object method invocation (similar to subroutine call in other instruction sets). The JVM itself is written in C and so can be ported to run on most platforms. It needs thread support and I/O (for dynamic class loading). The Java byte-code is independent of the platform. There are also some hardware implementations of the JVM.
- jerez de la frontera — a town in SW Spain: famous for the making of sherry. Pop: 191 002 (2003 est)
- job control language — a language used to construct statements that identify a particular job to be run and specify the job's requirements to the operating system under which it will run. Abbreviation: JCL.
- john o'groat's house — the northern tip of Scotland, near Duncansby Head, NE Caithness, traditionally thought of as the northernmost point of Britain: from Land's End to John o'Groat's House.
- joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
- jordan curve theorem — the theorem that the complement of a simple closed curve can be expressed as the union of two disjoint sets, each having as boundary the given curve.
- junior featherweight — a boxer weighing up to 122 pounds (54.9 kg), between bantamweight and featherweight.
- kamin's interpreters — (language, tool) A set of interpreters for Pascal, Lisp, APL, Scheme, SASL, CLU, Smalltalk, and Prolog. Tim Budd <[email protected]> implemented them as subclasses in C++ sometime before 1991-09-12.