22-letter words containing p, a, n, t
- fall prey to something — To fall prey to something bad means to be taken over or affected by it.
- fallacy of composition — the fallacy of inferring that a property of parts or members of a whole is also a property of the whole (opposed to fallacy of division).
- 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.
- 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.
- garmisch-partenkirchen — a city in S Germany, in the Bavarian Alps.
- 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
- 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
- graph rewriting system — An extension of a term rewriting system which uses graph reduction on terms represented by directed graphs to avoid duplication of work by sharing expressions.
- graphical display unit — an output device incorporating a cathode ray tube on which both line drawings and text can be displayed. It is usually used in conjunction with a light pen to input or reposition data
- 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.
- 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.
- interpretive semantics — a school of semantic theory based on the doctrine that the rules that relate sentences to their meanings form an autonomous system, separate from the rules that determine what is grammatical in a language
- 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.
- landscape architecture — the art of arranging or modifying the features of a landscape, an urban area, etc., for aesthetic or practical reasons.
- 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).
- le chatelier principle — the law that if a constraint is applied to a system in equilibrium, the system adjusts to a new equilibrium that tends to counteract the constraint.
- left-handed compliment — an ambiguous compliment
- lethargic encephalitis — sleeping sickness (def 2).
- little st bernard pass — a pass over the Savoy Alps, between Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, and La Thuile, Italy: 11th-century hospice. Height: 2187 m (7177 ft)
- 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/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.