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20-letter words containing p, c, e

  • field ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • file descriptor leak — (programming)   (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
  • fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
  • fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
  • flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
  • flat-plate collector — a type of solar collector consisting of a series of flat glass or plastic plates with black metal surfaces that absorb solar energy.
  • floodlight projector — a powerful lamp having a reflector curved to produce a floodlight.
  • freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
  • frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
  • fundamental particle — elementary particle.
  • general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
  • general public virus — (software, legal)   A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
  • get a real computer! — (jargon)   A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
  • get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
  • glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
  • go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
  • good neighbor policy — a diplomatic policy of the U.S., first presented in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt, for the encouragement of friendly relations and mutual defense among the nations of the Western Hemisphere.
  • gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
  • graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware)   Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
  • group code recording — (storage)   (GCR) A recording method used for 6250 BPI magnetic tapes. GCR typically uses a group of five bits of code to represent four bits of data. The encoding ensures no more than two or three zeros occur in a row, and no more than eight or so ones occur in a row, where zeros represent an absense of magnetic change. GCR is also used on Commodore Business Machines diskette drives; the 4040, 8050, 154x, 157x and 158x series of 5.25" and 3.5" low and high density diskette drives used with 8-bit home computers circa 1977 to 1992. It was also supported on Amiga internal and external drives but only used for reading non-Amiga disks. Compare NRZI, PE.
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
  • hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
  • harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
  • have an itching palm — to desire money greedily
  • have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
  • helicopter parenting — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
  • heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
  • hieroglyphic hittite — an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of Indo-European, written in a pictographic script in Syria c1200–c600 b.c.: the same language as written in cuneiform in Anatolia is known as Luwian.
  • high-energy particle — Physics
  • hipparchus satellite — an astronometric satellite launched in 1989 by the European Space Agency that measured the position, proper motion, and brightness of 118 218 stars down to 12th magnitude and the magnitude and colour of a million stars down to 10th magnitude
  • hire-purchase system — a system of payment for a commodity in regular installments while using it.
  • hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
  • household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking
  • human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
  • hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
  • hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
  • hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
  • hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
  • hypercholesterolemia — the presence of an excessive amount of cholesterol in the blood.
  • hypercholesterolemic — (pathology) Of, pertaining to, or having hypercholesterolemia.
  • hyperhomocysteinemia — (medicine) The presence of an excessive amount of homocysteine in the blood.
  • hypodermic injection — the injection of a medicine or drug under the skin
  • imperfect contrition — sincere penitence or remorse.
  • implicit parallelism — (parallel)   A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which decides automatically which parts to run in parallel. The best way of providing implicit parallelism is still (1995) an active research topic. The problem is to generate the right number of parallel tasks of the right size (or "granularity"). Too many tasks and the system gets bogged down in house-keeping, or memory for waiting tasks runs out, too few tasks and processors are left idle. The best performance is usually achieved with explicit parallelism where the programmer can annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks.
  • imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
  • in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
  • income tax inspector — a person whose job is to assess individuals' income tax liability
  • incomplete dominance — the appearance in a heterozygote of a trait that is intermediate between either of the trait's homozygous phenotypes.
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