0%

21-letter words containing s, e, a, i

  • continuous assessment — If pupils or students undergo continuous assessment, they get qualifications partly or entirely based on the work they do during the year, rather than on exam results.
  • continuous stationery — paper that is perforated between pages and folded concertina fashion, used in dot-matrix, line, and daisywheel printers
  • convertible insurance — any form of life or health insurance, either individual or group, that enables the insured to change or convert the insurance to another form, as term to whole life insurance or group to individual health insurance.
  • conway's game of life — (simulation)   The first popular cellular automata based artificial life simulation. Life was invented by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970 and was first introduced publicly in "Scientific American" later that year. Conway first devised what he called "The Game of Life" and "ran" it using plates placed on floor tiles in his house. Because of he ran out of floor space and kept stepping on the plates, he later moved to doing it on paper or on a checkerboard and then moved to running Life as a computer program on a PDP-7. That first implementation of Life as a computer program was written by M. J. T. Guy and S. R. Bourne (the author of Unix's Bourne shell). Life uses a rectangular grid of binary (live or dead) cells each of which is updated at each step according to the previous state of its eight neighbours as follows: a live cell with less than two, or more than three, live neighbours dies. A dead cell with exactly three neighbours becomes alive. Other cells do not change. While the rules are fairly simple, the patterns that can arise are of a complexity resembling that of organic systems -- hence the name "Life". Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with Life, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented Life in TECO!; see Gosperism). When a hacker mentions "life", he is more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, the 1950s-era board game or the human state of existence.
  • coquilles st. jacques — an appetizer of minced scallops in a wine and cream sauce topped with grated cheese and browned under a broiler: usually served in scallop shells.
  • coronal mass ejection — a cloud of particles ejected from the sun's surface during a solar flare
  • corporate hospitality — Corporate hospitality is the entertainment that a company offers to its most valued clients, for example by inviting them to sporting events and providing them with food and drink.
  • corrupt practices act — any of several U.S. statutes for ensuring the purity of elections by forbidding the purchase of votes, restricting the amount and source of political contributions, limiting campaign expenditures, and requiring the submission of an itemized statement of such expenditures.
  • cosmological argument — one of the arguments that purport to prove the existence of God from empirical facts about the universe, esp the argument to the existence of a first cause
  • cosmological redshift — the part of the redshift of celestial objects resulting from the expansion of the universe.
  • cost driver attribute — (programming)   Factors affecting the productivity of software development. These include attributes of the software, computers, personnel, and project.
  • cost-benefit analysis — an analysis that takes into account the costs of a project and its benefits to society, as well as the revenue it generates
  • cottony-cushion scale — a small scale insect, Icerya purchasi, that is a pest of citrus trees in California: it is controlled by introducing an Australian ladybird, Rodolia cardinalis, into affected areas
  • counterdemonstrations — Plural form of counterdemonstration.
  • crankcase compression — Crankcase compression is the method of starting some smaller two-stroke engines, where the mixture charge is compressed in a sealed crankcase by the descending piston before passing to the combustion chamber.
  • credit card insurance — Credit card insurance is coverage for situations in which someone fraudulently uses your credit card.
  • credit life insurance — insurance guaranteeing payment of the unpaid portion of a loan if the debtor should die.
  • criminal conversation — (formerly) a common law action brought by a husband by which he claimed damages against an adulterer
  • croscarmellose sodium — Croscarmellose sodium is a substance used in tablets and capsules as a disintegrant.
  • cross-cousin marriage — marriage between the children of a brother and sister.
  • customer satisfaction — When customers are pleased with the goods or services they have bought, you can refer to customer satisfaction.
  • dark-field microscope — ultramicroscope
  • data set organization — (operating system, storage)   (DSORG) An IBM term for file structure. These include PS physical sequential, DA direct access, IS indexed sequential, PO partitioned (a library). This system dates from OS/360, and breaks down beginning with VSAM and VTAM, where it is no longer applied. Sequential and indexed data sets can be accessed using either a "basic" or a "queued" "access method." For example a DSORG=PS file can use either BSAM (basic sequential access method) or QSAM (queued sequential access method). It can also be processed as a direct file using BDAM. Likewise a library can be processed using BPAM (basic partitioned access method), BSAM, QSAM, or BDAM. DSORG and access method are somewhat, but not completely, orthogonal. The "basic" access method deals with physical blocks rather than records, and usually provides more control over the specific device. Each I/O operation using the "basic" access method reads or writes a single block. A "basic" read or write starts an asynchronous I/O operation, and the programmer is responsible for waiting for completion and checking for errors. The "queued" access method deals with logical records and provides blocking and deblocking services. It is "queued" because it provides read-ahead and write-behind services. While a program is processing records in one input block, for example, QSAM may be reading one or more blocks ahead. Queued "get" or "put" operations are synchronous as far as the programmer is concerned. The operation is complete when the next logical record has been successfully processed. EXCP (Execute Channel Program) is a lower-level method of accessing data. IBM manuals usually named "Data Administration Guide", e.g. SC26-4505-1 for MVS/ESA DFP 3.1, provide more detail about data set organizations and access methods.
  • de-ontological ethics — the branch of ethics dealing with right action and the nature of duty, without regard to the goodness or value of motives or the desirability of the ends of any act.
  • death by misadventure — a possible verdict in a coroner's court, indicating that death was due to an accident not to a crimes or somebody's negligence
  • decompression chamber — a chamber in which the pressure of air can be varied slowly for returning people from abnormal pressures to atmospheric pressure without inducing decompression sickness
  • deep scattering layer — any of the stratified zones in the ocean which reflect sound during echo sounding, usually composed of marine organisms which migrate vertically from c. 250 to 800 m (c. 820 to 2,625 ft)
  • delusions of grandeur — If someone has delusions of grandeur, they think and behave as if they are much more important or powerful than they really are.
  • democratic centralism — the Leninist principle that policy should be decided centrally by officials, who are nominally democratically elected
  • denominational school — a school associated with a particular religious denomination
  • department of justice — the department of the U.S. federal government charged with the responsibility for the enforcement of federal laws. Abbreviation: DOJ.
  • deprovincialization's — to make provincial in character.
  • designated employment — (in Britain) any of certain kinds of jobs reserved for handicapped workers under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944
  • devil's walking-stick — Hercules'-club (sense 1)
  • devil's-walking-stick — Hercules-club (def 2).
  • differential calculus — the branch of mathematics that deals with differentials and derivatives.
  • differential windlass — a pair of hoisting drums of different diameter turning at the same rate, such that a pulley suspended below them on a line wound on the larger drum and unwound from the smaller drum is raised with mechanical advantage.
  • digital videocassette — a videocassette containing magnetic tape used for high-fidelity digital recording or playback of video. Abbreviation: DVC.
  • disassortative mating — the reproductive pairing of individuals that have traits more dissimilar than would likely be the case if mating were random (contrasted with assortative mating).
  • discretionary account — an account in which the stockbroker is allowed complete control over the purchase and sale of securities on the customer's behalf.
  • disestablishmentarian — a person who favors the separation of church and state, especially the withdrawal of special rights, status, and support granted an established church by a state; an advocate of disestablishing a state church.
  • disk operating system — DOS.
  • displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
  • display advertisement — an advertisement designed to attract attention by using devices such as conspicuous or elegant typefaces, graphics, etc
  • dissociative disorder — a mental disorder, as multiple personality, characterized by sudden temporary alteration in consciousness, identity, or motor behavior.
  • distant early warning — a US radar detection system to warn of missile attack
  • distinctiveness ratio — the ratio of the relative frequency of some event in a given sample to that in the general population or another relevant sample
  • distributed smalltalk — ["The Design and Implementation of Distributed Smalltalk", J. Bennett, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):318-330 (Dec 1980)].
  • double predestination — the doctrine that God has foreordained both those who will be saved and those who will be damned.
  • double spanish burton — a tackle having one standing block and two running blocks, giving a mechanical advantage of five, neglecting friction.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?