21-letter words containing p, l, a, g
- joseph bonaparte gulf — an inlet of the Timor Sea in N Australia. Width: 360 km (225 miles)
- keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
- lap and diagonal belt — A lap and diagonal belt is a strap attached to a seat in a vehicle that extends horizontally in front of the hips and diagonally from the outer shoulder across the chest. You fasten it across your body in order to prevent yourself being thrown out of the seat if there is a sudden movement or stop.
- laugh up one's sleeve — the part of a garment that covers the arm, varying in form and length but commonly tubular.
- leaning tower of pisa — a round, marble campanile in Pisa, Italy, begun in 1174 and now 17 feet (5.2 meters) out of the perpendicular in its height of 179 feet (54 meters).
- linear graph notation — (LGN) A linearised representation of TCOL trees.
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- magnetic permeability — permeability (def 2).
- magneto-optical drive — magneto-optical disk
- magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- make a pig of oneself — If you say that someone is making a pig of themselves, you are criticizing them for eating a very large amount at one meal.
- megaspore mother cell — a diploid cell in plants that undergoes meiosis to create four haploid megaspores.
- mother-of-pearl glass — an American art glassware having colored glass set into indentations in a thickness of opaque glass, the whole covered with clear glass and etched slightly with acid.
- non-repeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- nothing in particular — not anything specific
- occupational guidance — advice and guidance relating to employment issues and career choices
- open graphics library — (graphics, library) (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
- open trading protocol — Internet Open Trading Protocol
- orthogonal projection — a two-dimensional graphic representation of an object in which the projecting lines are at right angles to the plane of the projection. Also called orthogonal projection. Compare isometric (def 5).
- pacific daylight time — the version of Pacific Standard Time that is in use when daylight saving time is being observed
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- paternal grandparents — the parents of someone's father
- pdp assembly language — (language) (PAL) The assembly language for the PDP-8 and PDP-11.
- physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
- physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
- plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pneumoencephalography — encephalography.
- polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
- polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
- programmed cell death — a normal, genetically regulated process leading to the death of cells and triggered by the presence or absence of certain stimuli, as DNA damage.
- psychological primary — one of a set of perceived colours (red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white) that can be used to characterize all other perceived colours
- psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
- pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
- pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
- quality point average — grade point average.
- real operating system — (operating system, abuse) The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
- rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
- redlegged grasshopper — a migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, of the southwestern and midwestern U.S., having reddish skin on the underside of the hind legs: an agricultural pest.
- replacement algorithm — The method used to determine which entry in an associative cache to flush to main memory when it is desired to cache a new block of data. The "least recently used" algorithm flushed the block which has not been accessed for the longest time. A random replacement algorithm picks any block with equal probability.
- sampling distribution — the distribution of a statistic based on all possible random samples that can be drawn from a given population.
- schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
- seven-segment display — (electronics) (SSD) A kind of display element consisting of seven independently controllable lines arranged as a rectangular figure eight. A seven-segment display is the simplest device that can display any of the digits zero to nine (and some other characters) by lighting different combinations of lines. They are often seen in electronic calculators or measuring equipment.
- simple actor language — (language) (SAL) A minimal actor language, used for teaching in:
- single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
- single spanish burton — a tackle having a runner as well as the fall supporting the load, giving a mechanical advantage of three, neglecting friction.
- social anthropologist — an anthropologist who deals with cultural and social phenomena such as kinship systems or beliefs, esp of nonliterate peoples
- spin angular momentum — to make (yarn) by drawing out, twisting, and winding fibers: Pioneer women spun yarn on spinning wheels.
- split-finger fastball — a type of fastball that sinks abruptly as it nears home plate, thrown with the grip used for a forkball
- structural psychology — psychology centering on the analysis of the structure or content of conscious mental states by introspective methods.