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17-letter words containing p, r, e, i

  • interprofessional — following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
  • interrelationship — reciprocal relation.
  • interrupt handler — (software)   A routine which is executed when an interrupt occurs. Interrupt handlers typically deal with low-level events in the hardware of a computer system such as a character arriving at a serial port or a tick of a real-time clock. Special care is required when writing an interrupt handler to ensure that either the interrupt which triggered the handler's execution is masked out (inhibitted) until the handler exits, or the handler is re-entrant so that multiple concurrent invocations will not interfere with each other. If interrupts are masked then the handler must execute as quickly as possible so that important events are not missed. This is often arranged by splitting the processing associated with the event into "upper" and "lower" halves. The lower part is the interrupt handler which masks out further interrupts as required, checks that the appropriate event has occurred (this may be necessary if several events share the same interrupt), services the interrupt, e.g. by reading a character from a UART and writing it to a queue, and re-enabling interrupts. The upper half executes as part of a user process. It waits until the interrupt handler has run. Normally the operating system is responsible for reactivating a process which is waiting for some low-level event. It detects this by a shared flag or by inspecting a shared queue or by some other synchronisation mechanism. It is important that the upper and lower halves do not interfere if an interrupt occurs during the execution of upper half code. This is usually ensured by disabling interrupts during critical sections of code such as removing a character from a queue.
  • interrupt request — (IRQ) The name of an input found on many processors which causes the processor to suspend normal instruction execution temporarily and to start executing an interrupt handler routine. Such an input may be either "level sensitive" - the interrupt condition will persist as long as the input is active or "edge triggered" - an interrupt is signalled by a low-to-high or high-to-low transition on the input. Some processors have several interrupt request inputs allowing different priority interrupts.
  • interrupted screw — a screw having the thread interrupted in one or more places by longitudinal channels, as in the breech of a cannon or the lead screw of a lathe.
  • intradepartmental — Within a department.
  • intraspecifically — Between individuals of the same species.
  • introspectiveness — characterized by introspection, the act or process of looking into oneself.
  • inversion therapy — a method used to stretch and align the body, especially the lower back, by suspending the entire body upside down from an apparatus that grips or supports the feet or knees.
  • invisible exports — services sold to a foreign country or countries
  • invisible imports — imports of services rather than goods
  • iontophoretically — By means of iontophoresis.
  • irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
  • isoelectric point — the pH at which a substance is electrically neutral or at which it is at its minimum ionization.
  • japanese slippers — (in Malaysia) casual sandals; flip-flops
  • japanese wisteria — a wisteria, Wisteria floribunda, of Japan, having violet, violet-blue, pink, red, or white flowers, grown in the U.S. as an ornamental.
  • judgment of paris — the decision by Paris to award Aphrodite the golden apple of discord competed for by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera.
  • jurisprudentially — In terms of jurisprudence.
  • jus primae noctis — droit du seigneur.
  • karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
  • karitane hospital — a hospital for young babies and their mothers
  • kidney transplant — surgery to replace a kidney
  • l'hospital's rule — the theorem that for the quotient of two functions satisfying certain conditions on a given closed interval, each having infinite limit or zero as limit at a given point, the limit of the quotient at the given point is equal to the limit of the quotient of the derivatives of each function.
  • la perouse strait — a strait between S Sakhalin Island, Russia and N Hokkaido Island, Japan connecting the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. 25 miles (40 km) wide.
  • lambda expression — (mathematics)   A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
  • landscape painter — artist who depicts natural scenery
  • larmor precession — the precession of charged particles, as electrons, placed in a magnetic field, the frequency of the precession (Larmor frequency) being equal to the electronic charge times the strength of the magnetic field divided by 4π times the mass.
  • legal proceedings — court case
  • lempert operation — fenestration (def 3c).
  • lepidopterologist — One who studies lepidopterology.
  • lesser periwinkle — a Eurasian apocynaceous evergreen plant of the genus Vinca,; V. minor, having trailing stems and blue flowers
  • let something rip — If you let something rip, you do it as quickly or as forcefully as possible. You can say 'let it rip' or 'let her rip' to someone when you want them to make a vehicle go as fast as it possibly can.
  • lexicographically — the writing, editing, or compiling of dictionaries.
  • liberty of speech — freedom of speech.
  • life imprisonment — long-term prison sentence
  • life of the party — most lively, outgoing person
  • lighthouse keeper — a person who mans a lighthouse and makes sure that the light is working properly
  • ligurian republic — the republic in NW Italy set up by Napoleon in 1797, incorporated into France in 1805, and united with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.
  • linear dependence — (in linear algebra) the property of a set of elements in a vector space in which at least one of the vectors in the set can be written as a linear combination of the others.
  • lipopolysaccaride — a molecule, consisting of lipid and polysaccharide components, that is the main constituent of the cell walls of Gram-negative bacteria
  • liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
  • liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
  • literacy campaign — a campaign designed to reduce illiteracy and promote literacy in a country, area, etc
  • logical operation — Boolean operation.
  • lower paleolithic — See under Paleolithic.
  • lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
  • m-expression lisp — (MLISP) The original "meta-language" syntax of Lisp, designed by John McCarthy in 1962. MLISP was intended for external use in place of the parenthesised S-expression syntax.
  • maintainer script — (Debian)   One of the scripts (preinst, prerm, postinst, postrm) that may be included in a Debian binary package. These scripts may create and/or remove symlinks, files or directories that, for some reason, could not be done directly by dpkg. Maintainer scripts frequently create or update the symlinks in the /etc/rc?.d directories and start, stop, or restart daemons.
  • malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
  • malay archipelago — an extensive island group in the Indian and Pacific oceans, SE of Asia, including the Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands, the Moluccas, and the Philippines.
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