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26-letter words containing p, r, i, c

  • general protection failure — (GPF, or General Protection Fault) An addressing error, caught by the processor's memory protection hardware, that cannot be attributed to any expected condition such as a page fault.
  • generic expert system tool — (artificial intelligence)   (GEST) An expert system shell for Symbolics Lisp machine, with frames, forward chaining, backward chaining and fuzzy logic; written by John Gilmore(?) at GA Tech.
  • german democratic republic — a former country in central Europe: created in 1949 from the Soviet zone of occupied Germany established in 1945: reunited with West Germany in 1990. 41,827 sq. mi. (108,333 sq. km). Capital: East Berlin.
  • gnu general public license — General Public License
  • government printing office — the federal agency that prints and disseminates publications for other federal agencies. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
  • grand army of the republic — an organization, founded in 1866, composed of men who served in the U.S. Army and Navy during the Civil War: its last member died in 1956. Abbreviation: G.A.R.
  • grand canyon national park — a national park in N Arizona, including part of the Grand Canyon and the area around it. 1009 sq. mi. (2615 sq. km).
  • human-computer interaction — (software, hardware)   (HCI) The study of how humans interact with computers, and how to design computer systems that are easy, quick and productive for humans to use. See also Human-Computer Interface.
  • hydraulic submersible pump — A hydraulic submersible pump is a pump which is used offshore and onshore for downhole and subsea boosting, and can combine production and injection duties.
  • integrated data processing — IDP.
  • interactive voice response — (communications)   (IVR) A telecommunications system, prevelant with PBX and voice mail systems, that uses a prerecorded database of voice messages to present options to a user, typically over telephone lines. User input is retrieved via DTMF tone key presses. When used in conjunction with voice mail, for example, these systems typically allow users to store, retrieve, and route messages, as well as interact with an underlying database server which may allow for automated transactions and data processing. (15 Sept 1997)
  • international reply coupon — a coupon that can be exchanged for postage stamps to send a letter to a foreign country. It is used to reimburse a correspondent for postage without having to deal with foreign currencies
  • javascript object notation — (programming)   (JSON) Syntax for serialising JavaScript objects, often used as a data carrier format. JSON is based on a subset of the JavaScript programming language. It uses a file extension of .json and is considered a language-independent data format.
  • justice of the peace court — (in Scotland, formerly) a court with limited criminal jurisdiction held by justices of the peace in counties: replaced in 1975 by the district court
  • karachai-cherkess republic — an autonomous republic in the S Russian Federation in Europe, in the Caucasus. 5442 sq. mi. (14,100 sq. km). Capital: Cherkessk.
  • keep one's fingers crossed — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
  • kings canyon national park — a national park in E California: deep granite gorges; giant sequoias; mountains. 708 sq. mi. (1835 sq. km).
  • lossless audio compression — (audio, compression)   Any kind of audio compression in which the original signal and the decoded signal are bitwise identical. Lossless audio compression algorithms are usually based on a data compression algorithm like PKzip or gzip but specialized for PCM audio data. The signal is divided into predictable tonal components and unpredictable noisy components. Tonal components are stored as coefficients of a predictor, the remaining signal is coded by Rice coding, Huffman coding or arithmetic coding.
  • macintosh operating system — (operating system)   (Mac OS) Apple Computer, Inc.'s proprietary operating system for their Macintosh family of personal computers. The part of the operating system that simulates the desktop is called "Finder." The multitasking version of Finder was called "MultiFinder" until multitasking was integrated into the core of the OS with the introduction of System 7.0 in 1990. The Macintosh series provides a built-in graphics language, called "QuickDraw", which provides a standard for software developers. Mac OS 8, scheduled for delivery in July 1997, included new human-interface features, increased system stability and performance, a PowerPC processor-native Finder, tighter integration of Internet access through panel-based "assistants," Personal Web Sharing and the ability to run Java applets and programs through Mac OS Run Time for Java. Version 9.2 was the last version of the bespoke Mac OS. The next version, Mac OS X is quite different, being based on Unix. See also Macintosh file system, Macintosh user interface.
  • mainstream corporation tax — (in Britain) the balance of the corporation tax formerly paid by a company for an accounting period after the advance corporation tax had been deducted
  • mammoth cave national park — a national park in central Kentucky: limestone caverns with onyx formations, stalagmites, and stalactites. 79 sq. mi. (205 sq. km).
  • master chief petty officer — a noncommissioned rank above a senior chief petty officer. Abbreviation: MCPO.
  • mecklenburg-west pomerania — a state of NE Germany, along the Baltic coast: consists of the former state of Mecklenburg and those parts of W Pomerania not incorporated into Poland after World War II: part of East Germany until 1990. Pop: 1 732 000 (2003 est)
  • micronetics standard mumps — (MSM) A version of MUMPS for the IBM PC RT and R6000.
  • minimum-access programming — a method of programming in which latency is reduced to a minimum.
  • monochrome display adapter — (hardware, graphics)   (MDA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PC. MDA can display only monochrome 80*25 text (IBM PC video mode 7). It is now obsolete.
  • multi-color graphics array — (hardware, graphics)   (MCGA) One of IBM's less popular hardware video display standards for use in the IBM PS/2. MCGA can display 80*25 text in monochrome, 40*25 text in 256 colours or 320*200 pixel graphics in 256 colors. It is now obsolete.
  • national merit scholarship — one of some 6000 college scholarships awarded annually since 1956, by the nonprofit, grant-supported National Merit Scholarship Corporation, to high-school students (National Merit Scholars) on the basis of scholastic record, personal character, and score on a test administered nationally.
  • not touch with a bargepole — to refuse to have anything to do with
  • official production system — (language)   (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
  • open document architecture — (standard)   (ODA) ISO standard (8613) for describing documents. It allows text, graphics, and facsimile documents to be transferred between different systems.
  • paraconsistent probability — (logic)   A notion introduced by Florentin Smarandache: The probability (T, I, F) that an event occurs is calculated from different sources which may be contradictory or may overlap information; here T, I, F are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T)+sup(I)+sup(F) > 100. See neutrosophic probability
  • parent teacher association — an organization of teachers and the parents of their students, as within a public school, to promote mutual understanding and to increase the effectiveness of the educational program. Abbreviation: PTA, P.T.A.
  • parent-teacher association — an organization of teachers and the parents of their students, as within a public school, to promote mutual understanding and to increase the effectiveness of the educational program. Abbreviation: PTA, P.T.A.
  • pellagra-preventive factor — nicotinic acid or its amide, nicotinamide, being the vitamin-B-complex members that serve to prevent pellagra.
  • people's republic of china — People's Republic of, a country in E Asia. 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). Capital: Beijing.
  • permanent health insurance — a form of insurance that provides up to 75 per cent of a person's salary, until retirement, in case of prolonged illness or disability
  • phenylethylbarbituric acid — phenobarbital.
  • phenylpyruvic oligophrenia — phenylketonuria.
  • philosophical anthropology — anthropology (def 4).
  • philosophical-anthropology — the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind.
  • physical transport network — (communications)   (PTN) The actual hardware through which data transfer devices are connected.
  • physics analysis workbench — (tool)   (PAW) A general purpose portable tool for analysis and presentation of physics data.
  • pick up the threads of sth — If you pick up the threads of an activity, you start it again after an interruption. If you pick up the threads of your life, you become more active again after a period of failure or bad luck.
  • post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
  • primary sex characteristic — any of the body structures directly concerned in reproduction, as the testes, ovaries, and external genitalia.
  • prince henry the navigator — Prince, 1394–1460, prince of Portugal.
  • principle of superposition — any of several physical laws that the resultant of similar vector quantities at a point is a function of the sum of the individual quantities, especially the law that the displacement at a point in a medium undergoing simple harmonic motion is equal to the sum of the displacements of each individual wave.
  • private finance initiative — (in Britain) a government scheme to encourage private investment in public projects
  • privately held corporation — A privately held corporation is a company whose shares cannot be bought by the general public.
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