22-letter words containing p, r, o, n
- flocculent precipitate — a woolly-looking precipitate, as aluminum hydroxide formed by the addition of ammonia to an aluminum-salt solution.
- for no apparent reason — If you say that something happens for no apparent reason, you cannot understand why it happens.
- 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.
- functional programming — (programming) (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
- galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
- geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
- give a person what for — to punish or reprimand a person severely
- give it up for someone — to applaud someone
- glossopharyngeal nerve — either of the ninth pair of cranial nerves, consisting of motor fibers that innervate the muscles of the pharynx, the soft palate, and the parotid glands, and of sensory fibers that conduct impulses to the brain from the pharynx, the middle ear, and the posterior third of the tongue.
- go through one's paces — to show one's abilities, skills, etc.
- government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
- government expenditure — the overall public spending carried out by the government
- government osi profile — (networking, standard) (GOSIP) A subset of OSI standards specific to US Government procurements, designed to maximize interoperability in areas where plain OSI standards are ambiguous or allow excessive options.
- governor winthrop desk — an 18th-century American desk having a slant front.
- 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 national product — the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced in a country during one year. Abbreviation: GNP.
- gross written premiums — Gross written premiums are the total revenue from a contract expected to be received by an insurer before deductions for reinsurance or ceding commissions.
- group of seventy-seven — the developing countries of the world
- guanosine triphosphate — GTP.
- hague peace conference — a meeting held at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899, that established The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration.
- help a person off with — to assist a person in the removal of (clothes)
- hold the purse strings — hold the purse strings, to have the power to determine how money shall be spent.
- home improvement grant — a government grant for house improvements such as insulation, adding a bathroom, or urgent repairs
- horizontal application — An application program common to different business processes, e.g. office automation. Compare vertical application.
- horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
- hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
- 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.
- ice-making compartment — a part of a refrigerator in which ice is made
- immigration department — the government department responsible for laws regarding immigrants and immigration
- imperative programming — imperative language
- incremental repetition — repetition, with variation, of a refrain or other part of a poem, especially a ballad.
- independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
- 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.
- initial program loader — (operating system) (IPL) A bootstrap loader which loads the part of an operating system needed to load the remainder of the operating system.
- intermetallic compound — a compound of two or more metals.
- interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
- interrogator-responsor — a radio or radar transceiver for sending a signal to a transponder and receiving and interpreting the reply.
- 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.
- keep a person guessing — to let a person remain in a state of uncertainty
- 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.
- love-hate relationship — If you have a love-hate relationship with someone or something, your feelings towards them change suddenly and often from love to hate.
- 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.
- make one's flesh creep — to move slowly with the body close to the ground, as a reptile or an insect, or a person on hands and knees.
- make/prove one's point — If you make your point or prove your point, you prove that something is true, either by arguing about it or by your actions or behaviour.
- 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.
- mecklenburg-vorpommern — German name of Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania.
- missing persons bureau — the part of the Police Force dealing with tracing missing people
- 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