21-letter words containing p, a, i, n, s
- macintosh common lisp — (language) (MCL) Common Lisp for the Apple Macintosh. Guillaume Cartier, of the Mathematics Department at UQAM, Canada, has written some libraries.
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
- main-topsail schooner — a two-masted or three-masted schooner having square topsails on the foremast and mainmast: a jackass brig or jackass bark.
- make a pig of oneself — If you say that someone is making a pig of themselves, you are criticizing them for eating a very large amount at one meal.
- make one's peace with — the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.
- manufacturing process — chain of production
- marine superintendent — a person who is responsible for the maintenance of the vessels of a shipping line, for their docking and the handling of cargo, and for the hiring of personnel for deck departments.
- mechanical suspension — the act of suspending.
- medical jurisprudence — forensic medicine.
- metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
- microsoft corporation — (company) The biggest supplier of operating systems and other software for IBM PC compatibles. Software products include MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, Microsoft Access, LAN Manager, MS Client, SQL Server, Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC), MS Mail, and SNA Server for Windows NT. Microsoft was founded as "Micro-soft" in 1975 by Bill Gates (now CEO) and his high school pal Paul Allen. Their first product was a version of BASIC for the new Altair computer [which one?]. In 1980, IBM chose Microsoft to supply the operating system for the IBM PC. On the UK television program "The Net" in May 1994, Bill Gates said he was betting his company on the information highway". Quarterly sales $1293M, profits $362M (Aug 1994).
- modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
- multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
- national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
- naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
- negative prescription — the barring of adverse claims to property, etc, after a specified period of time has elapsed, allowing the possessor to acquire title
- nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
- old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- open graphics library — (graphics, library) (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
- operational semantics — (theory) A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
- pacific standard time — See under standard time.
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- paper-white narcissus — a white-flowered variety of Narcissus tazetta, often forced for indoor bloom.
- parasitic oscillation — (in an electronic circuit) oscillation at any undesired frequency
- path coverage testing — (testing) Testing a program by examining which lines of executable code are visited (as in code coverage testing) and also the ways of getting to each line of code and the subsequent sequence of execution. Path coverage testing is the most comprehensive type of testing that a test suite can provide. It can find more bugs, especially those that are caused by data coupling. However, path coverage is hard and usually only used for small and/or critical sections of code.
- pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
- peephole optimisation — (compiler) A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
- performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
- personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
- personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
- phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
- physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
- physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
- physician's assistant — a person trained to perform under the supervision of a physician many clinical procedures traditionally performed by a physician, as diagnosing and treating minor ailments. Abbreviation: PA.
- pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
- piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
- pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
- plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
- play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
- political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to 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.
- pomp and circumstance — ceremony
- poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
- postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
- potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
- potassium thiocyanate — a colorless, crystalline, hygroscopic, water-soluble solid, KSCN, used chiefly in the manufacture of chemicals, dyes, and drugs.
- poweropen association — An independent body established to promote, and test conformance with, the PowerOpen Environment (POE).