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22-letter words containing o, p, s, i

  • if push comes to shove — to press upon or against (a thing) with force in order to move it away.
  • 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.
  • independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
  • independent suspension — an automotive suspension system in which each wheel is attached to the frame independently, so that a road bump affecting one wheel has no effect on the others.
  • information processing — processing of information, especially the handling of information by computers in accordance with strictly defined systems of procedure.
  • 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
  • jacquard, joseph-marie — Joseph-Marie Jacquard
  • 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.
  • jump out of one's skin — to be very startled
  • 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).
  • lempel-ziv compression — Substitutional compression schemes proposed by Jakob Ziv and Abraham Lempel in 1977 and 1978. There are two main schemes, LZ77 and LZ78. Lempel-Ziv Welch compression is a variant of LZ78.
  • lesser spotted dogfish — a small spotted European shark, Scyliorhinus caniculus
  • let sth drop/fall/slip — If you let drop, let fall, or let slip information, you reveal it casually or by accident, during a conversation about something else.
  • lord justice of appeal — an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal
  • 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.
  • lowest common multiple — the smallest number that is a common multiple of a given set of numbers.
  • 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/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.
  • mcculloch-pitts neuron — (artificial intelligence)   The basic building block of artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.
  • microspectrophotometer — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
  • microspectrophotometry — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
  • microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
  • mind one's p's and q's — to be careful to behave correctly and use polite or suitable language
  • miscellaneous expenses — small expenses of various kinds
  • missing persons bureau — the part of the Police Force dealing with tracing missing people
  • monoammonium phosphate — a white, crystalline, moderately water-soluble compound, NH 4 H 2 PO 4 , used as fertilizer, in fire extinguishers, etc.
  • motoring correspondent — a journalist who reviews and writes about cars
  • mozilla public license — Open source license
  • non-constructive proof — (logic)   (Or "existence proof") A proof that something exists that does not provide an example of that thing or a method for finding an example. (A constructive proof does provide such an example or method). For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0 there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A non-constructive proof might proceed by observing that as k changes continuously from 0 to 1, f(k) changes continuously from n to p and, since they lie either side of zero, f(k) must pass through zero for some intermediate value of k. This proof does not tell us what that value of k is, only that it exists.
  • non-hodgkin's lymphoma — Pathology. any of several malignancies of the lymphatic system in which the cells characteristic of Hodgkin's disease are absent.
  • non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
  • nonrepresentationalism — not resembling or portraying any object in physical nature: a nonrepresentational painting.
  • nonspecific urethritis — nongonococcal urethritis.
  • nonspecular reflection — the diffuse reflection of sound or light waves
  • north rhine-westphalia — a state in W Germany; formerly a part of Rhine province. 13,154 sq. mi. (34,070 sq. km). Capital: Düsseldorf.
  • oak processionary moth — a moth, (Thaumetopoea processionea), of the family Thaumetopoeidae, the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
  • occupational therapist — professional who assists with rehabilitation
  • oceanic whitetip shark — whitetip shark (def 2).
  • open source definition — (standard)   (OSD) Definition of distribution terms for open source software, promoted by the Open Source Initiative.
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • open-market operations — the purchase and sale on the open market of government securities by the Bank of England for the purpose of regulating the supply of money and credit to the economy
  • operating instructions — instructions on how to use something (such an electrical appliance, etc)
  • operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
  • operational data store — (database)   (ODS) A group of integrated databases designed to support the monitoring of operations. Unlike function oriented databases, an ODS contains subject-oriented, dynamic, current enterprise-wide information that is continually updated to show the current state of operations.
  • outline specifications — preliminary specifications or plans on which later plans are based
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