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15-letter words containing p, u, i, r

  • cervical plexus — a network of nerves branching from the spinal nerves of the neck region and innervating the neck, chest, diaphragm, and part of the face.
  • ceteris paribus — other things being equal
  • chartophylacium — (in a medieval church) a place for the keeping of records and documents.
  • chinese juniper — a shrub or tree, Juniperus chinensis, of China, Mongolia, and Japan, having scalelike leaves and small, round, purplish-brown fruit.
  • chromium-plated — having been plated with chromium
  • circumscription — the act of circumscribing or the state of being circumscribed
  • circumscriptive — That circumscribes or outlines.
  • circumspectness — the quality of being circumspect
  • claustrophobics — Plural form of claustrophobic.
  • clumber spaniel — a type of thickset spaniel having a broad heavy head
  • colourpoint cat — a cat with increased pigmentation of cooler points of the body, such as ears, feet, tail, nose, and scrotum (in males)
  • come up for air — rise to water's surface
  • communist party — (in non-Communist countries) a political party advocating Communism
  • computer cookie — HTTP cookie
  • computer dating — the use of computers by dating agencies to match their clients
  • computer ethics — (philosophy)   Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?).
  • computer vision — a robot analogue of human vision in which information about the environment is received by one or more video cameras and processed by computer: used in navigation by robots, in the control of automated production lines, etc.
  • computer-phobia — a person who distrusts or is intimidated by computers.
  • computerisation — (chiefly, British) alternative spelling of computerization.
  • computerization — to control, perform, process, or store (a system, operation, or information) by means of or in an electronic computer or computers.
  • concurrent lisp — (language)   A concurrent version of Lisp. Sugimoto et al implemented an interpreter on a "large scale computer" and were planning to implement it on multiple microprocessors.
  • connoisseurship — a person who is especially competent to pass critical judgments in an art, particularly one of the fine arts, or in matters of taste: a connoisseur of modern art.
  • corpus striatum — a striped mass of white and grey matter situated in front of the thalamus in each cerebral hemisphere
  • corruptibleness — The state or quality of being corruptible.
  • countercampaign — a campaign responding to another campaign
  • counterpetition — a formal request for legal action submitted to a court by a respondent who has received a petition
  • counterplotting — Present participle of counterplot.
  • counterpointing — Present participle of counterpoint.
  • counterpunching — Present participle of counterpunch.
  • country bumpkin — an awkward, simple, rustic person
  • courting couple — a pair of lovers
  • cpu info center — (processor)   An old website at the University of California at Berkeley describing many different computers and their performance.
  • creeping fescue — red fescue.
  • cricopharyngeus — (anatomy) Part of the inferior pharyngeal constrictor, arising from the cricoid cartilage.
  • crispus attucks — Crispus [kris-puh s] /ˈkrɪs pəs/ (Show IPA), 1723?–70, American patriot, probably a fugitive slave, killed in the Boston Massacre.
  • cryptosporidium — any parasitic sporozoan protozoan of the genus Cryptosporidium, species of which are parasites of birds and animals and can be transmitted to humans, causing severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea (cryptosporidiosis)
  • crystal pick-up — a record-player pick-up in which the current is generated by the deformation of a piezoelectric crystal caused by the movements of the stylus
  • daguerreotyping — Present participle of daguerreotype.
  • daguerreotypist — an obsolete photographic process, invented in 1839, in which a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was developed by exposure to mercury vapor.
  • de bruijn graph — (mathematics)   A class of graphs with elegant properties. De Bruijn graphs are especially easy to use for routing, with shifting of source and destination addresses.
  • deputy minister — (in Canada) the senior civil servant in a government department
  • direct coupling — conductive coupling between electronic circuits, as opposed to inductive or capacitative coupling
  • disreputability — The state of being disreputable.
  • disrespectfully — characterized by, having, or showing disrespect; lacking courtesy or esteem: a disrespectful remark about teachers.
  • distributor cap — the cap of an engine's distributor that holds in place the wires from the distributor to the sparking plugs
  • distributorship — a franchise held by a distributor.
  • double printing — the exposure of the same positive photographic emulsion to two or more negatives, resulting in the superimposition of multiple images after development
  • draughtproofing — Present participle of draughtproof.
  • draughtsmanship — (British) alternative spelling of draftsmanship.
  • drive-up window — a window through which customers are served at a drive-through facility.
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