21-letter words containing p, i, c
- crankcase compression — Crankcase compression is the method of starting some smaller two-stroke engines, where the mixture charge is compressed in a sealed crankcase by the descending piston before passing to the combustion chamber.
- crittenden compromise — a series of constitutional amendments proposed in Congress in 1860 to serve as a compromise between proslavery and antislavery factions, one of which would have permitted slavery in the territories south but not north of latitude 36°30′N.
- crool someone's pitch — to spoil an opportunity for someone
- crystallographic axis — one of the imaginary reference lines passing through the center of an ideal crystal, designated a, b, or c.
- cyclical unemployment — unemployment caused by fluctuations in the level of economic activity inherent in trade cycles
- cyclomatic complexity — (programming, testing) A measure of the number of linearly independent paths through a program module. Cyclomatic complexity is a measure for the complexity of code related to the number of ways there are to traverse a piece of code. This determines the minimum number of inputs you need to test all ways to execute the program.
- dark-field microscope — ultramicroscope
- datamatic corporation — Honeywell
- decompression chamber — a chamber in which the pressure of air can be varied slowly for returning people from abnormal pressures to atmospheric pressure without inducing decompression sickness
- deep scattering layer — any of the stratified zones in the ocean which reflect sound during echo sounding, usually composed of marine organisms which migrate vertically from c. 250 to 800 m (c. 820 to 2,625 ft)
- department of justice — the department of the U.S. federal government charged with the responsibility for the enforcement of federal laws. Abbreviation: DOJ.
- deployment descriptor — (programming) (DD) A J2EE configuration file.
- deprovincialization's — to make provincial in character.
- development education — an area of study that aims to give pupils an understanding of their involvement in world affairs
- diapason normal pitch — a standard of pitch in which A above middle C is established at 435 vibrations per second.
- difference of opinion — disagreement
- displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
- disruptive technology — A disruptive technology is a new technology, such as computers and the Internet, which has a rapid and major effect on technologies that existed before.
- distributed processes — (DP) The first concurrent language based on remote procedure calls.
- drop the handkerchief — a children's game in which all the players but one stand in a circle facing inward, while that one player stealthily drops a handkerchief behind a player in the circle who must pursue and attempt to catch the one who dropped the handkerchief before the latter reaches the vacated place.
- dwarf japanese quince — a low, shrubby, Japanese flowering quince, Chaenomeles japonica, of the rose family, having salmon-to-orange flowers and yellow fruit.
- electric displacement — the electric flux density when an electric field exists in free space into which a dielectric is introduced
- electric polarization — Electric polarization is the type of polarization of electricity that occurs in a dielectric.
- electromagnetic pulse — a surge of electromagnetic radiation, esp one resulting from a nuclear explosion, which can disrupt electronic devices and, occasionally, larger structures and equipment
- electromyographically — By means of, or in terms of, electromyography.
- electronic publishing — Electronic publishing is the publishing of documents in a form that can be read on a computer, for example as a CD-ROM.
- electronic typewriter — a keyboard machine for writing electromechanically in characters resembling print
- emd enterprises, inc. — (company) A software development and consulting firm specialising in database and client-server applications.
- emitter coupled logic — (ECL) (Or "Current Mode Logic") A technology for building logic gates where the emitter of a transistor is used as the output rather than its collector. ECL has a propagation time of 0.5 - 2 ns (faster than TTL) and a power dissipation 3 - 10 times higher than TTL.
- empirical probability — a measure or estimate of the degree of confidence one may have in the occurrence of an event, defined as the proportion observed in a sample
- employee contribution — money contributed by an employee to his or her employer's pension fund
- employer contribution — money contributed by an employer to his or her employee's pension fund
- endoplasmic reticulum — an extensive intracellular membrane system whose functions include synthesis and transport of lipids and, in regions where ribosomes are attached, of proteins
- epidemic encephalitis — any type of widespread encephalitis caused by various viruses
- euro-commercial paper — commercial paper issued in a eurocurrency
- exposure compensation — the act of overriding a camera's automatic exposure in order to achieve a particular effect or due to difficult lighting conditions
- file service protocol — (protocol) (FSP) A protocol, similar to FTP, for copying files between computers. It's designed for anonymous archives, and has protection against server and network overloading. It doesn't use connections so it can survive interruptions in service. Until 1993-08-12, FSP didn't stand for anything. Wen-King was responsible for the initials and Michael Grubb <[email protected]> for their eventual expansion. Other suggestions were "File Slurping Protocol", "Flaky Stream Protocol" and "FTP's Sexier Partner".
- flotation compartment — in a boat, an enclosed section filled with air or gas to give buoyancy
- fluorophosphoric acid — any of three acids containing fluorine and phosphorus, HPF 6 , HPO 2 F 2 , or H 2 PO 3 F.
- foreground processing — a type of processing that supports interaction between interactive and batch operations
- foreign correspondent — a correspondent, as for a periodical, assigned to send back articles and news dispatches from a foreign country for publication.
- forensic anthropology — the branch of physical anthropology in which anthropological data, criteria, and techniques are used to determine the sex, age, genetic population, or parentage of skeletal or biological materials in questions of civil or criminal law.
- forward compatibility — (jargon) The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
- framing specification — A specification of the "protocol bits" that surround the "data bits" on a communications channel to allow the data to be "framed" into chunks, like start and stop bits in EIA-232. It allows a receiver to synchronize at points along the data stream.
- french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
- fuming sulphuric acid — a mixture of pyrosulphuric acid, H2S2O7, and other condensed acids, made by dissolving sulphur trioxide in concentrated sulphuric acid
- functional dependency — (database) Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
- functional imperative — a requirement for the survival of any social system, as communication, control of conflict, or socialization.
- gastrohepatic omentum — lesser omentum.
- generic type variable — (programming) (Also known as a "schematic type variable"). Different occurrences of a generic type variable in a type expression may be instantiated to different types. Thus, in the expression let id x = x in (id True, id 1) id's type is (for all a: a -> a). The universal quantifier "for all a:" means that a is a generic type variable. For the two uses of id, a is instantiated to Bool and Int. Compare this with let id x = x in let f g = (g True, g 1) in f id This looks similar but f has no legal Hindley-Milner type. If we say f :: (a -> b) -> (b, b) this would permit g's type to be any instance of (a -> b) rather than requiring it to be at least as general as (a -> b). Furthermore, it constrains both instances of g to have the same result type whereas they do not. The type variables a and b in the above are implicitly quantified at the top level: f :: for all a: for all b: (a -> b) -> (b, b) so instantiating them (removing the quantifiers) can only be done once, at the top level. To correctly describe the type of f requires that they be locally quantified: f :: ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)) -> (c, d) which means that each time g is applied, a and b may be instantiated differently. f's actual argument must have a type at least as general as ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)), and may not be some less general instance of this type. Type variables c and d are still implicitly quantified at the top level and, now that g's result type is a generic type variable, any types chosen for c and d are guaranteed to be instances of it. This type for f does not express the fact that b only needs to be at least as general as the types c and d. For example, if c and d were both Bool then any function of type (for all a: a -> Bool) would be a suitable argument to f but it would not match the above type for f.