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22-letter words containing r, i, v, e, c

  • dominant seventh chord — a chord consisting of the dominant and the major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh above it. Its most natural resolution is to a chord on the tonic
  • emergency road service — a form of motoring insurance that sends assistance to drivers when their vehicles break down on a journey; it is provided either by the national or regional automobile association or by a private insurance company
  • flat-screen television — A flat-screen television is a television with a flat, narrow screen.
  • friar minor conventual — a friar belonging to a branch of the Franciscan order that separated from the Observants in the 15th century, and that observes a modification of the rule of St. Francis. Also called Conventual. Compare Friar Minor, capuchin (def 4).
  • galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
  • government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
  • 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.
  • guest services manager — A guest services manager at a hotel is responsible for the services and facilities that the hotel provides for its guests.
  • halfwave rectification — a rectifier that changes only one half of a cycle of alternating current into a pulsating, direct current.
  • human interface device — (hardware)   (HID) Any device to interact directly with humans (mostly input) like keyboard, mouse, joystick, or graphics tablet.
  • indeterminate cleavage — the division of an egg into cells, each of which has the potential of developing into a complete organism
  • inland revenue service — In the United States, the Inland Revenue Service is the government authority which collects taxes. The abbreviation IRS is often used.
  • interactive courseware — (ICW) A training program controlled by a computer that relies on trainee input to determine the order and pace of instruction delivery. The trainee advances through the sequence of instructional events by making decisions and selections. The instruction branches according to the trainee's responses. ICW is a US military term which includes computer-aided instruction and computer-based training.
  • interactive television — techniques that enable viewers to interact with what they are watching
  • interactive whiteboard — a smooth, glossy sheet of white plastic that can be written on with a colored pen or marker in the manner of a blackboard.
  • interpretive semantics — a school of semantic theory based on the doctrine that the rules that relate sentences to their meanings form an autonomous system, separate from the rules that determine what is grammatical in a language
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
  • million electron volts — a unit of energy equal to the energy acquired by an electron in falling through a potential of 10 6 volts. Abbreviation: MeV .
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • name service switching — Domain Name System
  • negative reinforcement — form of conditioning
  • non-constructive proof — (logic)   (Or "existence proof") A proof that something exists that does not provide an example of that thing or a method for finding an example. (A constructive proof does provide such an example or method). For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0 there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A non-constructive proof might proceed by observing that as k changes continuously from 0 to 1, f(k) changes continuously from n to p and, since they lie either side of zero, f(k) must pass through zero for some intermediate value of k. This proof does not tell us what that value of k is, only that it exists.
  • non-restrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • nondestructive testing — any of several methods of detecting flaws in metals without causing damage. The most common techniques involve the use of X-rays, gamma rays, and ultrasonic vibrations
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • particular affirmative — a proposition of the form “Some S is P.” Symbol: I.
  • percussive maintenance — (jargon)   The fine art of whacking a device to get it working, possibly using a fine adjuster.
  • physiographic province — a geographic region in which climate and geology have given rise to an array of landforms different from those of surrounding regions.
  • pizza delivery service — a service whereby a pizza restaurant delivers pizzas to customers who order by telephone
  • positive reinforcement — encouragement
  • preventive maintenance — (PM) To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance, scratch monkey.
  • price variation clause — a clause in a contract allowing the seller to vary the selling price under certain conditions
  • private-equity company — an organization that uses private equity to gain control of and manage companies
  • privileged instruction — A machine code instruction that may only be executed when the processor is running in supervisor mode. Privileged instructions include operations such as I/O and memory management.
  • productivity agreement — an agreement whereby the employees of an organization agree to changes which are intended to improve productivity in return for an increase in pay or other benefits
  • progressive participle — present participle.
  • public service vehicle — a bus or coach
  • quantitative character — a character or trait that is transmitted by quantitative inheritance.
  • reactive schizophrenia — a type of schizophrenia of rapid onset and brief duration that occurs in response to environmental factors.
  • received pronunciation — the pronunciation of British English considered to have the widest geographical distribution and the fewest regional peculiarities, originally the pronunciation of educated speakers in southern England and traditionally that used in the public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge universities, adopted by many speakers elsewhere in England and widely used in broadcasting. Abbreviation: RP.
  • reconstructive surgery — the restoration of appearance and function following injury or disease, or the correction of congenital defects, using the techniques of plastic surgery.
  • remote access services — (communications)   (RAS) A service provided by Windows NT which allows most of the services which would be available on a network to be accessed over a modem link. The service includes support for dialup and logon, and then presents the same network interface as the normal network drivers (albeit slightly slower!). It is not necessary to run Windows NT on the client - there are client versions for other Windows operating systems.
  • reproductive isolation — the conditions, as physiological or behavioral differences or geographical barriers, that prevent potentially interbreeding populations from cross-fertilization.
  • retroactive inhibition — the tendency for the retention of learned material or skills to be impaired by subsequent learning, esp by learning of a similar kind
  • reverse discrimination — the unfair treatment of members of majority groups resulting from preferential policies, as in college admissions or employment, intended to remedy earlier discrimination against minorities.
  • revolutionary calendar — the calendar of the French First Republic, adopted in 1793 and abandoned in 1805, consisting of 12 months, each of 30 days, and 5 intercalary days added at the end of the year (6 every fourth year). The months, beginning at the autumnal equinox, are Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor.
  • rural delivery service — mail delivery operated primarily to deliver and collect mail in rural communities with no other convenient postal facilities.
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