23-letter words containing o, i, l, p, a, e
- liquefied petroleum gas — a mixture of various petroleum gases, esp propane and butane, stored as a liquid under pressure and used as an engine fuel
- locally euclidean space — a topological space in which each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open set in a Euclidean space of specified dimension.
- lossy audio compression — (audio, compression) Any audio compression algorithm which does not retain every bit of data but only reproduces a signal that sounds more or less like the original. Examples are MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC.
- lymphoblastic leukaemia — a severe blood disorder in which abnormal leukocytes are identified as immature forms of lymphocytes
- maximal free expression — (MFE) A free expression is sub-expression of a lambda abstraction not containing the bound variable. A maximal free expression is a free expression not contained within any other free expression. See full laziness.
- meaningful relationship — a romantic relationship based upon mutual respect and supportiveness and marked by a sense of commitment and fulfillment.
- micropachycephalosaurus — A very small pachycephalosaurid, ornithischian dinosaur of the genus Micropachycephalosaurus.
- mpeg-4 aac main profile — (compression, standard, algorithm) A successor of MP3 allowing transparent coding at data rates of 70-75% of that of MP3. It is very different from MP3, only used MDCT, no subband coding. It is much more complex that MP3 and MPEG-2 AAC Low Profile.
- multimedia compact disc — (storage) (MMCD) A CD-ROM standard for storing 4.7 GB of data including video. MMCD is being developed by a large numer of computer manufacturers and is expected to be shipped in late 1996 or early 1997. Initially it will be aimed at the consumer market, then perhaps in CD-ROM format for computers, and maybe later on erasble CD.
- national superannuation — a means-related pension paid to elderly people
- north ossetian republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the N slopes of the central Caucasus Mountains. Capital: Vladikavkaz. Pop: 709 900 (2002). Area: about 8000 sq km (3088 sq miles)
- not a hair out of place — If you say that someone has not a hair out of place, you are emphasizing that they are extremely smart and neatly dressed.
- on-line data processing — the storing or processing of data on a computer using the internet
- parametric polymorphism — Polymorphism was first identified by Christopher Strachey in 1967 and developed by Hindley and Milner. For example we could specify that the argument of the "head" function was a list without specifying a type for the elements of the list. In Haskell we would write: head :: [a] -> a meaning head has type function from "list of a" to "a" where "a" is a type variable). This is known as parametric polymorphism. Polymorphic typing allows strong type checking as well as generic functions. ML in 1976 was the first language with polymorphic typing. See also generic type variable.
- parasexual reproduction — reproduction by recombination of genes from genetically dissimilar nuclei within binucleate or multinucleate cells, as in filamentous fungi.
- parliamentary democracy — a system of government in which people elect representatives to a parliament to make laws, for example Canada and the UK
- partial differentiation — the process of finding one of the partial derivatives of a function of several variables.
- patient confidentiality — the law that a doctor or medical practitioner cannot reveal anything said to them by their patients during consultation or treatment
- pentachloronitrobenzene — a crystalline compound, C 6 Cl 5 NO 2 , used as an herbicide and insecticide. Abbreviation: PCNB.
- peroxymonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- pharmaceuticals company — a company specialising in developing and marketing pharmaceuticals
- philadelphia pepper pot — pepper pot (def 1).
- photoelectric magnitude — the magnitude of a star determined using a photometer plus a filter to select light or other radiation of the desired wavelength
- phyletic classification — classification of organisms based on their assumed evolutionary histories and relationships.
- physical memory address — physical address
- physiological phonetics — the branch of phonetics that deals with the motive processes, anatomical measurements, spirometric properties, muscle and membrane tone, and kinetic aspects of the production of speech and with related aspects of the reception of speech.
- plain old documentation — (text) (pod, occasionally "POD") A simple markup language used to embed documentation, literate programming-style, in Perl programs. Pod readers and converters are part of the standard Perl distribution and the documentation provided with Perl is all in pod format.
- planetesimal hypothesis — one of the small celestial bodies that, according to one theory (planetesimal hypothesis) were fused together to form the planets of the solar system.
- play by electronic mail — (games) A kind of game where the players use electronic mail to communicate. This may be done via a human moderator or an automatic mailing list exploder on some central machine or it may be fully distributed with each player just addressing his mail to all other players. This is a natural extension of "play by mail" games conducted via snail mail.
- polish lowland sheepdog — a strongly-built medium-sized sheepdog of a Polish breed with a long thick shaggy coat that covers the eyes
- political incorrectness — Political incorrectness is the attitude or policy shown by someone who does not care if they offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
- polybrominated biphenyl — PBB.
- portable tool interface — (programming, standard) (PTI) A standard such as PCTE, allowing interworking between different software tools via defined interfaces to the user and to the repository or object management system.
- precautionary principle — the precept that an action should not be taken if the consequences are uncertain and potentially dangerous
- preferred provider plan — A preferred provider plan is a health insurance plan in the U.S. written by an organization of hospitals and physicians who provide services to clients of a particular insurance company.
- presidential government — a system of government in which the powers of the president are constitutionally separate from those of the legislature.
- price escalation clause — a clause in a contract allowing the seller to raise prices if the cost of inputs increases
- printer access protocol — (networking, protocol, printer) (PAP) A protocol used in Mac OS Appletalk to provide bi-directional communication between PostScript printers and the client computer.
- private limited company — a company whose shares can be bought by the public
- process hazard analysis — Process hazard analysis is calculating what might be a hazard in a process, how likely it is to happen, and what should be done if someone or something is exposed to this hazard.
- professional misconduct — a violation of the rules or boundaries set by the governing body of a profession
- program design language — Any of a large class of formal and profoundly useless pseudo-languages in which management forces one to design programs. Too often, management expects PDL descriptions to be maintained in parallel with the code, imposing massive overhead of little or no benefit. See also flow chart.
- public-key cryptography — public-key encryption
- publicly-quoted company — a company whose shares are traded on a stock exchange
- puerto rican royal palm — a feather palm, Roystonea borinquena, of Puerto Rico and St. Croix, having leaves about 10 feet (3 meters) long and egg-shaped, yellowish-brown fruit.
- put in a false position — to cause misunderstanding of the intentions, opinions, etc. of
- real simple syndication — (spelling) Illiterate form of Really Simple Syndication.
- refinery waste disposal — Refinery waste disposal is the system for dealing with waste materials, especially hazardous ones, in a refinery.
- refuse disposal service — a place or facility where rubbish and waste can be disposed
- relative sunspot number — a number indicating the degree of sunspot activity on the sun as a factor of observer idiosyncrasies, the number of sunspot groups, and the number of individual sunspots.