0%

22-letter words containing p, r

  • block diagram compiler — (simulation, language)   (BDL) A block diagram simulation tool, with associated language.
  • blow one's own trumpet — to boast of one's own skills or good qualities
  • bone marrow transplant — the transplantation of bone marrow from donor to recipient
  • bone-marrow transplant — Surgery. a technique in which a small amount of bone marrow is withdrawn by a syringe from a donor's pelvic bone and injected into a patient whose ability to make new blood cells has been impaired by a disease, as anemia or cancer, or by exposure to radiation.
  • borderline personality — Psychiatry. a personality disorder characterized by instability in many areas, as mood, identity, self-image, and behavior, and often manifested by impulsive actions, suicide attempts, inappropriate anger, or depression.
  • boundary value problem — any of a series of problems occurring in the solution of a differential equation with boundary conditions.
  • brachiocephalic artery — a major artery, arising from the arch of the aorta, that supplies blood to the right arm and the head.
  • break (or keep) faith — to be disloyal (or loyal) to one's beliefs, principles, etc.
  • british national party — a far-right political party
  • bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
  • business reply service — a service involving reply-paid envelopes
  • c programmer's disease — (programming)   The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvellous consequences of fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.
  • cargo cult programming — (programming, humour)   A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). The term "cargo cult" is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centre on building elaborate mockups of aeroplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like aeroplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterisation of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
  • carpal tunnel syndrome — a condition characterized by pain and tingling in the fingers, caused by pressure on a nerve as it passes under the ligament situated across the front of the wrist
  • categorical imperative — (in the ethics of Kant) the unconditional moral principle that one's behaviour should accord with universalizable maxims which respect persons as ends in themselves; the obligation to do one's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of further ends
  • catoctin mountain park — a federal park in N central Maryland: site of Camp David. 9 sq. mi. (23 sq. km).
  • central african empire — a former name (1976–79) of Central African Republic.
  • ceramic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (CPGA) A form of Pin Grid Array package used by Cyrix III processors. Compare PPGA and FC-PGA.
  • certificate of deposit — a negotiable certificate issued by a bank in return for a deposit of money for a term of up to five years
  • chip on one's shoulder — an inclination to fight or quarrel
  • chorionic gonadotropin — Also called human chorionic gonadotropin. Biochemistry. a hormone, produced in the incipient placenta of pregnant women, that stimulates the production of estrogen and progesterone: its presence in blood or urine is an indication of pregnancy.
  • client-centred therapy — a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist makes no attempt to interpret what the patient says but encourages him or her to develop his or her own attitudes and insights, often by questioning
  • cockpit voice recorder — a device which records conversations in and communications from the cockpit of an aircraft
  • collective pitch lever — a lever in a helicopter to change the angle of attack of all the rotor blades simultaneously, causing it to rise or descend
  • color graphics adapter — (hardware, graphics)   (CGA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PCs. CGA can display 80*25 or 40*25 text in 16 colors, 640*200 pixels of graphics in two colors or 320*200 in four colors (IBM PC video modes 0-6). It is now obsolete.
  • colorado potato beetle — a black and yellow leaf beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, originally of Colorado and neighboring states but now a common pest in all potato-growing regions of the U.S.
  • combinatorial topology — the branch of topology that deals with the properties of geometric figures by considering the figures as being composed of elementary geometric figures, as points or lines.
  • comma separated values — (file format)   (CSV) A file format used as a portable representation of a database. Each line is one entry or record and the fields in a record are separated by commas. Commas may be followed by arbitrary space and/or tab characters which are ignored. If field includes a comma, the whole field must be surrounded with double quotes.
  • common snapping turtle — a large aggressive North American river turtle, Chelydra serpentina, having powerful hooked jaws and a rough shell
  • compactness preserving — (theory)   In domain theory, a function f is compactness preserving if f c is compact whenever c is.
  • company sergeant major — the senior Warrant Officer II in a British or Commonwealth regiment or battalion, responsible under the company second in command for all aspects of duty and discipline of the NCOs and men in that subunit
  • comparative government — the study and comparison of different forms of government.
  • comparative literature — the comparative study of various national literatures, stressing their influence one upon another, their use of similar forms, their treatment of similar themes, etc.
  • comparative musicology — ethnomusicology.
  • comparative psychology — the study of the similarities and differences in the behaviour of different species
  • compass deviation card — a card, sheet, or the like, with two compass roses printed on it concentrically, for recording, on a given voyage, the amount of deviation for which the navigator must compensate in using the ship's compass to steer a magnetic course.
  • complementary medicine — the treatment, alleviation, or prevention of disease by such techniques as osteopathy, homeopathy, aromatherapy, and acupuncture, allied with attention to such factors as diet and emotional stability, which can affect a person's wellbeing
  • complete metamorphosis — physical changes in the development of certain insects that include egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages, as in beetles, moths, or bees
  • complete quadrilateral — a polygon consisting of four lines and their six points of intersection
  • component architecture — (programming)   A notion in object-oriented programming where "components" of a program are completely generic. Instead of having a specialised set of methods and fields they have generic methods through which the component can advertise the functionality it supports to the system into which it is loaded. This enables completely dynamic loading of objects. JavaBeans is an example of a component architecture. See also design pattern.
  • compound annual return — the total return available from an investment, deposit, etc, when the interest earned is used to augment the capital
  • compulsory liquidation — the liquidation of a business in order to settle its debts
  • compuserve corporation — (company)   The parent organisation of CompuServe Information Service, CompuServe Network Services and CompuServe Remote Computing Services. CompuServe was owned by H.R. Block but is now (1999) owned by America On-Line.
  • computational geometry — (mathematics)   The study of algorithms for combinatorial, topological, and metric problems concerning sets of points, typically in Euclidean space. Representative areas of research include geometric search, convexity, proximity, intersection, and linear programming.
  • computational learning — grammatical inference
  • concurrent massey hope — (language, functional programming)   An extension of Massey Hope, by Peter Burgess, Robert Pointon, and Nigel Perry <[email protected]> of Massey University, NZ, that provides multithreading and typed inter-thread communication. It uses C for intermediate code rather than assembly language.
  • connecticut compromise — a compromise adopted at the Constitutional Convention, providing the states with equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
  • conservation of parity — the principle that the parity of the total wave function describing a system of elementary particles is conserved. In fact it is not conserved in weak interactions
  • contract of employment — a written agreement between an employer and an employee, that, taken together with the rights of each under statute and common law, determines the employment relations between them
  • cornell list processor — (CLP) A list processing language, an extension of CORC, used for simulation.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?