0%

16-letter words containing p, a, o, s, e

  • big bag of pages — (BIBOP) Where data objects are tagged with some kind of descriptor (giving their size or type for example) memory can be saved by storing objects with the same descriptor in one "page" of memory. The most significant bits of an object's address are used as the BIBOP page number. This is looked up in a BIBOP table to find the descriptor for all objects in that page. This idea is similar to the "zones" used in some Lisp systems (e.g. LeLisp).
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
  • bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
  • boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bowman's capsule — a membranous, double-walled capsule surrounding a glomerulus of a nephron.
  • brake horsepower — the rate at which an engine does work, expressed in horsepower. It is measured by the resistance of an applied brake
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
  • camomile shampoo — a liquid or cream preparation of soap or detergent with camomile extract to wash the hair
  • capsizing moment — the moment of an upsetting couple.
  • capsule wardrobe — a collection of clothes and accessories that includes only items considered essential
  • carbonless paper — a sheet of paper impregnated with dye which transfers writing or typing onto the copying surface below without the necessity for carbon pigment
  • carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
  • career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
  • caryophyllaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Caryophyllaceae, a family of flowering plants including the pink, carnation, sweet william, and chickweed
  • chattel personal — an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
  • chemical weapons — toxic chemicals used as weapons
  • chemoprophylaxis — the prevention of disease using chemical drugs
  • chinese pavilion — crescent (def 6).
  • chinese-pavilion — a shape resembling a segment of a ring tapering to points at the ends.
  • chipped potatoes — chips
  • cholecystography — radiography of the gall bladder after administration of a contrast medium
  • chopped tomatoes — tomatoes cut into pieces
  • chromatographies — Plural form of chromatography.
  • closed-captioned — (of a video recording) having subtitles which appear on screen only if the cassette is played through a special decoder
  • company of jesus — former name of the Society of Jesus.
  • compartmentalise — to divide into categories or compartments.
  • complex analysis — the branch of mathematics dealing with analytic functions of a complex variable.
  • complexity class — (algorithm)   A collection of algorithms or computable functions with the same complexity.
  • composite family — the large and varied plant family Compositae (or Asteraceae), typified by herbaceous plants having alternate, opposite, or whorled leaves and a whorl of bracts surrounding the flower heads, which are usually composed of a disk containing tiny petalless flowers and a ray of petals extending from the flowers at the rim of the disk, some flower heads being composed only of a disk or a ray and some plants having clusters of flower heads, and including the aster, daisy, dandelion, goldenrod, marigold, ragweed, sunflower, thistle, and zinnia.
  • compression wave — a shock wave that compresses the medium through which it is transmitted.
  • conspicuity tape — a highly reflective strip or tape used on a vehicle, clothing, etc., to make it more visible in low light.
  • contemporariness — existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same time: Newton's discovery of the calculus was contemporary with that of Leibniz.
  • conversation pit — a usually sunken portion of a room or living area with chairs, sofas, etc., often grouped around a fireplace, where people can gather to talk.
  • coping mechanism — something a person does to deal with a difficult situation
  • cops and robbers — a children's game in which a group of players imitate the behavior of police and of thieves, as in pursuing and capturing.
  • cops-and-robbers — A cops-and-robbers film, television programme, or book is one whose story involves the police trying to catch criminals.
  • cornet à pistons — a three-valved brass instrument of the trumpet family. Written range: about two and a half octaves upwards from E below middle C. It is a transposing instrument in B flat or A
  • cornet-a-pistons — cornet (def 1).
  • coroutine pascal — ["Control Separation in Programming languages", Lemon et al, ACM Ann Conf 1977].
  • cottage hospital — a small rural hospital
  • counterespionage — Counterespionage is the same as counterintelligence.
  • counterproposals — Plural form of counterproposal.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?