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20-letter words containing p, i, c, h

  • priority inheritance — (parallel)   A technique for avoiding priority inversion by temporarily raising the prioriry of all processes that want to access a shared resource to the highest priority level of any of them. Priority inversion occurs where a low priority process, L is holding a resource required by a high priority process, H, but L is not running because a medium priority process, M is running. Under priority inheritance, L temporarily inherits H's priority, allowing L to run and release the resource H is waiting for. For example, an ambulance (H) is stuck behind a lorry (L) waiting at a junction (the shared resource) for a gap in a line of cars (M) using the junction. Applying priority inheritance, the cars give way to the lorry as they would to the ambulance, thus allowing the lorry and then the ambulance to use the junction.
  • proactive inhibition — the tendency for earlier memories to interfere with the retrieval of material learned later
  • prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
  • prosthetic dentistry — prosthodontics.
  • pseudo-psychological — of or relating to psychology.
  • psychiatric hospital — institution treating mental disorders
  • psychological moment — the proper or critical time for achieving a desired result: She found the right psychological moment to make her request.
  • psychometric testing — the use of psychometric tests, often as a selection method
  • psychomotor epilepsy — temporal-lobe epilepsy.
  • public lending right — (in Britain) an act of Parliament that directs compensation to an author for the library loan of his or her book.
  • punch a (time) clock — to insert a timecard into a time clock when coming to or going from work
  • pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
  • recreational therapy — therapy by means of recreational activities engaged in by the patient
  • ring-necked pheasant — a gallinaceous Asian bird, Phasianus colchicus, having a white band around its neck, introduced into Great Britain, North America, and the Hawaiian Islands.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
  • schwarzschild sphere — the sphere which surrounds a non-rotating uncharged black hole, from within which no information can escape because of gravitational forces
  • semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
  • serpentine stretcher — an X -stretcher having curved lines.
  • sex change operation — a surgical operation designed to change a person's physical sexual characteristics to those of the opposite sex
  • skating championship — a competition for ice-skating
  • south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
  • spanish west african — of or relating to the former Spanish overseas territory of Spanish West Africa (now the overseas provinces of Ifni and Spanish Sahara) or its inhabitants
  • spanish-american war — the war between the U.S. and Spain in 1898.
  • spatial technologies — (company)   Distributors of the ACIS solid modelling engine.
  • special relationship — the exceptionally close political, diplomatic, cultural and historical relations between the United States and the United Kingdom
  • spectrophotoelectric — pertaining to the relationship between the wavelength of the incident radiation and the number of electrons released by a photoelectric substance.
  • spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
  • spherical coordinate — Usually, spherical coordinates. any of three coordinates used to locate a point in space by the length of its radius vector and the angles this vector makes with two perpendicular polar planes.
  • spiral of archimedes — a curve that is the locus of a point that moves outward with uniform speed along a vector, beginning at the origin, while the vector rotates about the origin with uniform angular velocity. Equation (in polar coordinates): r = aθ.
  • splice the mainbrace — to issue and partake of an extra allocation of alcoholic spirits
  • split the difference — the state or relation of being different; dissimilarity: There is a great difference between the two.
  • step into the breach — If you step into the breach, you do a job or task which someone else was supposed to do or has done in the past, because they are suddenly unable to do it.
  • switchboard operator — a person who operates an installation in a telephone exchange, office, hotel, etc, at which the interconnection of telephone lines is manually controlled
  • synthetic philosophy — the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, intended as a synthesis of all the sciences.
  • telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
  • the price of someone — what someone deserves, esp a fitting punishment
  • the thinking process — thought; the activity of thinking
  • theosophical society — a society founded by Madame Blavatsky and others, in New York in 1875, advocating a worldwide eclectic religion based largely on Brahmanic and Buddhistic teachings.
  • therapeutic abortion — abortion performed when a woman's pregnancy endangers her health.
  • to disturb the peace — If someone is accused of disturbing the peace, they are accused of behaving in a noisy and offensive way in public.
  • transposition cipher — a cipher that rearranges the letters of the plain text in a different sequence.
  • triple witching hour — the last hour of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the four Fridays each year when stock options, stock index futures, and options on such futures simultaneously expire: regarded as a time of extreme volatility in trading.
  • tropospheric scatter — transmission of radio frequency signals that have been scattered from irregularities in the troposphere to locations hundreds of kilometers distant.
  • under the microscope — If you say that something is under the microscope, you mean that it is being studied very closely, usually because it is believed that something is wrong with it.
  • video graphics array — (hardware)   (VGA) A display standard for IBM PCs, with 640 x 480 pixels in 16 colours and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is also a text mode with 720 x 400 pixels. IBM technical references define the *product name* of their original VGA display board as "Video Graphics Array", in contrast to the preceding boards, the "Color Graphics Adapter" (CGA) and "Enhanced Graphics Adapter" (EGA). See also Super Video Graphics Adapter.
  • visually handicapped — unable to carry out normal activities because of defects of vision, including blindness
  • white bush (scallop) — a variety of summer squash having a saucer-shaped white fruit, scalloped around the edges
  • white-lipped peccary — a piglike artiodactyl mammal, Tayassu albirostris, of forests of southern North America, Central and South America: family Tayassuidae
  • wipe the slate clean — begin afresh
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