22-letter words containing p, i, e, c
- flocculent precipitate — a woolly-looking precipitate, as aluminum hydroxide formed by the addition of ammonia to an aluminum-salt solution.
- forced place insurance — Forced place insurance is insurance taken out by a bank or creditor on an uninsured debtor's behalf on a property that is being used as collateral.
- galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
- garmisch-partenkirchen — a city in S Germany, in the Bavarian Alps.
- general public licence — (spelling) It's spelled "General Public License". (In the UK, "licence" is a noun and "license" is a verb (like "advice"/"advise") but in the US both are spelled "license").
- general public license — (legal) (GPL, note US spelling) The licence applied to most software from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project and other authors who choose to use it. The licences for most software are designed to prevent users from sharing or changing it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee the freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. The GPL is designed to make sure that anyone can distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if they wish); that they receive source code or can get it if they want; that they can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that they know they can do these things. The GPL forbids anyone to deny others these rights or to ask them to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for those who distribute copies of the software or modify it. See also General Public Virus.
- genetic fingerprinting — DNA fingerprinting.
- geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
- get/come to grips with — If you get to grips with a problem or if you come to grips with it, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
- gravitational collapse — the final stage of stellar evolution in which a star collapses to a final state, as a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, when the star's nuclear reactions no longer generate enough pressure to balance the attractive force of gravity.
- gross domestic product — gross national product excluding payments on foreign investments. Abbreviation: GDP.
- gum bichromate process — a contact printing method in which the image is formed on a coating of sensitized gum containing a suitable colored pigment and potassium or ammonium dichromate.
- hemorrhagic septicemia — an acute infectious disease of animals, caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, and characterized by fever, catarrhal symptoms, pneumonia, and general blood infection.
- high-speed net connect — (hardware, communications) (HNC) A network interface unit for BS2000 mainframes based on Novell NetWare, supporting Ethernet and FDDI.
- horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
- hybrid multiprocessing — (parallel) (HMP) The kind of multitasking which OS/2 supports. HMP provides some elements of symmetric multiprocessing, using add-on IBM software called MP/2. OS/2 SMP was planned for release in late 1993.
- hypothetical syllogism — a hypothetical syllogism has two uses. In propositional logic it expresses one of the rules of inference, while in the history of logic, it is a short-hand for the theory of consequence
- ice-cream parlor chair — a side chair made of heavy wire with a round wooden seat, especially for use at a table.
- ice-making compartment — a part of a refrigerator in which ice is made
- if push comes to shove — to press upon or against (a thing) with force in order to move it away.
- incremental repetition — repetition, with variation, of a refrain or other part of a poem, especially a ballad.
- independent contractor — self-employed or freelance worker
- information processing — processing of information, especially the handling of information by computers in accordance with strictly defined systems of procedure.
- intermetallic compound — a compound of two or more metals.
- interpretive semantics — a school of semantic theory based on the doctrine that the rules that relate sentences to their meanings form an autonomous system, separate from the rules that determine what is grammatical in a language
- isthmus of tehuantepec — the narrowest part of S Mexico, with the Bay of Campeche on the north coast and the Gulf of Tehuantepec (an inlet of the Pacific) on the south coast
- jackpot winning ticket — a ticket that contains all the winning numbers in a lottery etc, allowing the owner of the ticket to claim the jackpot prize
- jacquard, joseph-marie — Joseph-Marie Jacquard
- java community process — (project) (JCP) An organization controlled by Sun Microsystems to further the growth of the Java language and runtime. The JCP produces standards called Java Standard Requests, which are "requests" in the same sense as RFCs.
- landscape architecture — the art of arranging or modifying the features of a landscape, an urban area, etc., for aesthetic or practical reasons.
- le chatelier principle — the law that if a constraint is applied to a system in equilibrium, the system adjusts to a new equilibrium that tends to counteract the constraint.
- left-handed compliment — an ambiguous compliment
- lempel-ziv compression — Substitutional compression schemes proposed by Jakob Ziv and Abraham Lempel in 1977 and 1978. There are two main schemes, LZ77 and LZ78. Lempel-Ziv Welch compression is a variant of LZ78.
- lesser prairie chicken — either of two North American gallinaceous birds of western prairies, Tympanuchus cupido (greater prairie chicken) or T. pallidicinctus (lesser prairie chicken) having rufous, brown, black, and white plumage.
- lethargic encephalitis — sleeping sickness (def 2).
- liberal democrat party — The Liberal Democrat Party is the third largest political party in Britain and the main centre party. It believes in improving the constitution and the voting system and in providing good welfare services.
- lord justice of appeal — an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal
- lowest common multiple — the smallest number that is a common multiple of a given set of numbers.
- magnetic dipole moment — a measure of the magnetic strength of a magnet or current-carrying coil, expressed as the torque per unit magnetic-flux density produced when the magnet or coil is set with its axis perpendicular to the magnetic field
- magnetic pole strength — Electricity. a measure of the force exerted by one face of a magnet on a face of another magnet when both magnets are represented by equal and opposite poles. Symbol: m.
- mcculloch-pitts neuron — (artificial intelligence) The basic building block of artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.
- microspectrophotometer — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
- microspectrophotometry — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
- microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
- miscellaneous expenses — small expenses of various kinds
- modified american plan — (in hotels) a system of paying a single fixed rate that covers room, breakfast, and one other meal, usually dinner. Abbreviation: MAP.
- motoring correspondent — a journalist who reviews and writes about cars
- mozilla public license — Open source license
- mpeg-2 aac low profile — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format) A successor of MP3 allowing transparent coding at data rates of 75-80% of that of MP3. It is very different from MP3, only used MDCT, no subband coding.