24-letter words containing p, e, s, i
- jewish american princess — JAP.
- keep up with the joneses — If you say that someone is keeping up with the Joneses, you mean that they are doing something in order to show that they have as much money as other people, rather than because they really want to do it.
- knowledge representation — The subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with designing and using systems for storing knowledge - facts and rules about some subject. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to represent. In order to manipulate this knowledge we must specify how the abstract conceptualisation is represented as a concrete data structure. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualisation.
- komi autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the NW Russian Federation in Europe. 145,221 sq. mi. (376,122 sq. km). Capital: Syktyvkar.
- lab for computer science — MIT. http://lcs.mit.edu/.
- laugh in a person's face — to show open contempt or defiance towards a person
- le chatelier's principle — the principle that if a system in chemical equilibrium is subjected to a disturbance it tends to change in a way that opposes this disturbance
- lease with option to buy — A lease with option to buy is a lease that states that the person leasing the property has the right to purchase it at the end of the lease period.
- legal expenses insurance — Legal expenses insurance is insurance coverage against expenses incurred when you need to seek legal advice or pay for a lawsuit.
- licensed practical nurse — a person who has graduated from an accredited school of nursing and has become licensed to provide basic nursing care under the supervision of a physician or registered nurse. Abbreviation: LPN.
- liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
- long-spined sea scorpion — Cottus bubalis or Taurulus bubalis
- low-density polyethylene — highly branched polyethylene with low crystallinity and melting point, and a density of 0.91 to 0.94, prepared at very high pressures, and used mainly for sheeting, films, and packaging materials. Abbreviation: LDPE.
- machine independent sail — (MAINSAIL) From XIDAK, Palo Alto CA, +1 (415) 855 9271.
- mandy rice-davis applies — (chat) (MRDA) An acronym used to imply that someone is lying to protect their own interests. During the trial of Stephen Ward (who was charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Rice-Davies), the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied any involvement with her and Rice-Davies replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"
- manic-depressive illness — bipolar disorder.
- mari autonomous republic — autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 8994 sq. mi. (23,294 sq. km). Capital: Ioshkar-Ola.
- mass psychogenic illness — a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to psychological factors rather than environmental or physiological factors.
- master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
- michael viii palaeologus — 1234–1282, Byzantine ruler 1259–82, first of the Palaeologus emperors.
- minister plenipotentiary — plenipotentiary.
- monopolistic competition — the form of imperfect competition that exists when there are many producers or sellers of similar but differentiated goods or services
- multiple virtual storage — (operating system) (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
- mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
- narcissistic personality — a personality disorder characterized by extreme self-centeredness and self-absorption, fantasies involving unrealistic goals, an excessive need for attention and admiration, and disturbed interpersonal relationships.
- network operating system — (operating system) (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
- neutrosophic probability — (logic) An extended form of probability based on Neutrosophy, in which a statement is held to be t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F or the sum n=t+i+f.
- newton-raphson iteration — (algorithm) An iterative algorithm for solving equations. Given an equation, f x = 0 and an initial approximation, x(0), a better approximation is given by: x(i+1) = x(i) - f(x(i)) / f'(x(i)) where f'(x) is the first derivative of f, df/dx. Newton-Raphson iteration is an example of an anytime algorithm in that each approximation is no worse than the previous one.
- nonparametric statistics — the branch of statistics that studies data measurable on an ordinal or nominal scale, to which arithmetic operations cannot be applied
- officers' training corps — part of the British Army which provides military leadership training to students at UK universities
- open shortest-path first — Open Shortest-Path First Interior Gateway Protocol
- open software foundation — (body) (OSF) A foundation created by nine computer vendors, (Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips, Siemens and Hitachi) to promote "Open Computing". It is planned that common operating systems and interfaces, based on developments of Unix and the X Window System will be forthcoming for a wide range of different hardware architectures. OSF announced the release of the industry's first open operating system - OSF/1 on 23 October 1990.
- open system architecture — (operating system) (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
- operational requirements — (programming) Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
- optical signal processor — optical computing
- parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
- passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
- people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
- phosphorus sesquisulfide — (not in scientific use) a yellow, crystalline, flammable substance, P 4 S 3 , insoluble in cold water and decomposed by hot water: used chiefly in organic synthesis and in the manufacture of matches.
- photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
- physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
- pin something on someone — to lay the blame for something on someone
- plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
- pluck sth out of the air — If you say that someone plucks a figure, name, or date out of the air, you mean that they say it without thinking much about it before they speak.
- polish people's republic — former name of Poland.
- polymer matrix composite — A polymer matrix composite is a material consisting of a composite made stronger by adding fibers or particles to it.
- port address translation — (networking) (PAT) A function provided by some routers which allows hosts on a LAN to communicate with the rest of a network (such as the Internet) without revealing their own private IP address. All outbound packets have their IP address translated to the routers external IP address. Replies come back to the router which then translates them back into the private IP address of the original host for final delivery. Compare SOCKS.
- potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
- prairie button snakeroot — a stout composite plant, Liatris pycnostachya, of prairies in the central U.S., having showy, rose-purple flower heads in dense spikes.
- pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel) A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.