20-letter words containing p, r, e, m
- electromagnetic pump — a device for pumping liquid metals by placing a pipe between the poles of an electromagnet and passing a current through the liquid metal
- elephant in the room — an obvious truth deliberately ignored by all parties in a situation
- employer's liability — an employer's legal responsibility to pay damages to an employee who has been injured or who has contracted an illness because of the work he or she does
- environmental impact — the impact on the environment created by an industry, service, plan, or project
- equity of redemption — the right that a mortgager has in equity to redeem his property on payment of the sum owing, even though the sum is overdue
- evening primrose oil — an oil, obtained from the seeds of the evening primrose, that is claimed to stimulate the production of prostaglandins
- explicit parallelism — A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which allows or forces the programmer to annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks. This is obviously more work for the programmer than a system with implicit parallelism (where the system decides automatically which parts to run in parallel) but may allow higher performance.
- field ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
- field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
- first world problems — If you say that someone has First World problems, you mean that their problems are not really very important.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
- freedom of the press — the right to publish newspapers, magazines, and other printed matter without governmental restriction and subject only to the laws of libel, obscenity, sedition, etc.
- fundamental particle — elementary particle.
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
- hire-purchase system — a system of payment for a commodity in regular installments while using it.
- houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
- human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- hypercholesterolemia — the presence of an excessive amount of cholesterol in the blood.
- hypercholesterolemic — (pathology) Of, pertaining to, or having hypercholesterolemia.
- hyperhomocysteinemia — (medicine) The presence of an excessive amount of homocysteine in the blood.
- hyperlipoproteinemia — Pathology. any of various disorders of lipoprotein metabolism, usually characterized by abnormally high levels of cholesterol and certain lipoproteins in the blood.
- hypodermic injection — the injection of a medicine or drug under the skin
- ignotum per ignotius — an explanation that is obscurer than the thing to be explained
- imperfect contrition — sincere penitence or remorse.
- implicit parallelism — (parallel) A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which decides automatically which parts to run in parallel. The best way of providing implicit parallelism is still (1995) an active research topic. The problem is to generate the right number of parallel tasks of the right size (or "granularity"). Too many tasks and the system gets bogged down in house-keeping, or memory for waiting tasks runs out, too few tasks and processors are left idle. The best performance is usually achieved with explicit parallelism where the programmer can annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks.
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in any shape or form — If you say, for example, that you will not accept something in any shape or form, or in any way, shape or form, you are emphasizing that you will not accept it in any circumstances.
- income tax inspector — a person whose job is to assess individuals' income tax liability
- incomprehensibleness — The state of being incomprehensible.
- incorporated company — a legally constituted company
- inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
- innerspring mattress — a mattress with built-in coil springs
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- investment portfolio — the whole range of financial investments held by an individual investor or a financial organization
- isometric projection — a type of axonometric projection in which the object is shown with its three principal axes all equally tilted from the plane of viewing, with two of them usually tilted 30 degrees upward from the horizontal
- j robert oppenheimer — J(ulius) Robert, 1904–67, U.S. nuclear physicist.
- james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
- joseph of arimathaea — a member of the Sanhedrin who placed the body of Jesus in the tomb. Matt. 27:57–60; Mark 15:43.
- kamin's interpreters — (language, tool) A set of interpreters for Pascal, Lisp, APL, Scheme, SASL, CLU, Smalltalk, and Prolog. Tim Budd <[email protected]> implemented them as subclasses in C++ sometime before 1991-09-12.
- keep your mouth shut — If you keep your mouth shut about something, you do not talk about it, especially because it is a secret.
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- lampbrush chromosome — a chromosome with looped projections resembling a brush
- lavaliere microphone — a small microphone that hangs around the neck of a performer or speaker.
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- like death warmed up — very ill
- literate programming — (programming, text) Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.