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22-letter words containing p, t, i, l

  • critical path analysis — a technique for planning complex projects by analysing alternative systems with reference to the critical path, which is the sequence of stages requiring the longest time
  • d'alembert's principle — the principle that for a moving body the external forces are in equilibrium with the inertial forces; a generalization of Newton's third law of motion
  • decompartmentalization — the act of decompartmentalizing
  • deoxyribonucleoprotein — any of a class of nucleoproteins that yield DNA upon partial hydrolysis.
  • descriptive cataloging — the aspect of cataloging concerned with the bibliographic and physical description of a book, recording, or other work, accounting for such items as author or performer, title, edition, and imprint as opposed to subject content.
  • developmental disorder — any condition, such as autism or dyslexia, that appears in childhood and is characterized by delay in the development of one or more psychological functions, such as language skill
  • dicyclopentadienyliron — ferrocene (def 1).
  • digital standard mumps — (DSM) DEC's version of MUMPS.
  • direct public offering — A direct public offering is stock offered directly for sale to investors by a company without the use of underwriters or brokers.
  • directed acyclic graph — (DAG) A directed graph containing no cycles. This means that if there is a route from node A to node B then there is no way back.
  • directional microphone — a microphone that has a greater sensitivity to sounds coming from a particular area in front of it: used to eliminate unwanted sounds.
  • disciplinary committee — a committee charged with examining alleged breaches of discipline within an organization, profession, etc and adjudicating on them
  • disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
  • draft-quality printing — low-quality, high-speed output in printed form from a printer linked to a word processor
  • duplex high speed data — (DHSD) A term which describes a full-duplex channel that can carry 64 kilobits per second. This is the kind of service provided by an Inmarsat-B type portable earth station or a leased line (not ISDN).
  • educational psychology — a branch of psychology concerned with developing effective educational techniques and dealing with psychological problems in schools.
  • electrolytic capacitor — An electrolytic capacitor is an electrical capacitor with an electrolyte between the two plates.
  • electrophysiologically — In an electrophysiological way.
  • electrothermal printer — a printer that produces characters by burning the image on specially coated paper
  • employers' association — a body of employers, usually from the same sector of the economy, associated to further the interests of member companies by conducting negotiations with trade unions, providing advice, making representations to other bodies, etc
  • experimental condition — one of the distinct states of affairs or values of the independent variable for which the dependent variable is measured in order to carry out statistical tests or calculations
  • fall prey to something — To fall prey to something bad means to be taken over or affected by it.
  • fallacy of composition — the fallacy of inferring that a property of parts or members of a whole is also a property of the whole (opposed to fallacy of division).
  • file transfer protocol — (FTP) A client-server protocol which allows a user on one computer to transfer files to and from another computer over a TCP/IP network. Also the client program the user executes to transfer files. It is defined in STD 9, RFC 959. See also anonymous FTP, FSP, TFTP.
  • flocculent precipitate — a woolly-looking precipitate, as aluminum hydroxide formed by the addition of ammonia to an aluminum-salt solution.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • graphical display unit — an output device incorporating a cathode ray tube on which both line drawings and text can be displayed. It is usually used in conjunction with a light pen to input or reposition data
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • hypothetical syllogism — a hypothetical syllogism has two uses. In propositional logic it expresses one of the rules of inference, while in the history of logic, it is a short-hand for the theory of consequence
  • in the lap of the gods — If you say that a situation is in the lap of the gods, you mean that its success or failure depends entirely on luck or on things that are outside your control.
  • incremental repetition — repetition, with variation, of a refrain or other part of a poem, especially a ballad.
  • 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.
  • keep a stiff upper lip — either of the two fleshy parts or folds forming the margins of the mouth and functioning in speech.
  • landscape architecture — the art of arranging or modifying the features of a landscape, an urban area, etc., for aesthetic or practical reasons.
  • last call optimisation — (programming)   (Or "tail call optimisation") Discarding the immediate calling context (call stack frame) when the last action of a function or procedure, A, is to call another function or procedure, B. B will then return directly to A's caller, or possibly further up the call stack if the optimisation has been applied to several consecutive calls. Last call optimisation allows arbitrarily deep nesting of procedure calls without consuming memory to store useless environments. This is particularly useful in the special case of tail recursion optimisation, where a procedure's last action is to call itself (possibly indirectly).
  • le chatelier principle — the law that if a constraint is applied to a system in equilibrium, the system adjusts to a new equilibrium that tends to counteract the constraint.
  • left-handed compliment — an ambiguous compliment
  • lesser spotted dogfish — a small spotted European shark, Scyliorhinus caniculus
  • let sth drop/fall/slip — If you let drop, let fall, or let slip information, you reveal it casually or by accident, during a conversation about something else.
  • lethargic encephalitis — sleeping sickness (def 2).
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