24-letter words containing s, e, m, p, t
- machine independent sail — (MAINSAIL) From XIDAK, Palo Alto CA, +1 (415) 855 9271.
- make one's presence felt — If you make your presence felt, you do something which makes people notice you or pay attention to you.
- mari autonomous republic — autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 8994 sq. mi. (23,294 sq. km). Capital: Ioshkar-Ola.
- master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
- minister plenipotentiary — plenipotentiary.
- monopolistic competition — the form of imperfect competition that exists when there are many producers or sellers of similar but differentiated goods or services
- multiple virtual storage — (operating system) (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
- mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
- network operating system — (operating system) (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
- nonparametric statistics — the branch of statistics that studies data measurable on an ordinal or nominal scale, to which arithmetic operations cannot be applied
- open system architecture — (operating system) (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
- operational requirements — (programming) Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
- people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
- photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
- phrase-structure grammar — a grammar that consists of phrase-structure rules.
- physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
- pin something on someone — to lay the blame for something on someone
- polymer matrix composite — A polymer matrix composite is a material consisting of a composite made stronger by adding fibers or particles to it.
- portable scheme debugger — (PSD) A package for source code debugging of R4RS-compliant Scheme under GNU Emacs by Kellom ?ki Pertti <[email protected]>. Version 1.1. Distributed under GNU GPL. It works with scm, Elk and Scheme->C.
- potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
- pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel) A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.
- present company excepted — If you are making a general, unfavourable comment about a particular type of person, and you are with people of that type, you can say 'present company excepted' as a way of making your comment sound more polite.
- presumption of innocence — the rebuttable presumption of the innocence of the defendant in a criminal action in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, placing upon the prosecution the burden of proof of the defendant's guilt.
- pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications) (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
- progressive assimilation — assimilation in which a preceding sound has an effect on a following one, as in shortening captain to cap'm rather than cap'n.
- pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
- rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
- representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
- resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
- research and development — the part of a commercial company's activity concerned with applying the results of scientific research to develop new products and improve existing ones
- sequentially compact set — a set in which every sequence has a subsequence that converges to a point of the set.
- single person supplement — an additional sum of money that a hotel charges for one person to stay in a room meant for two people
- slop oil recovery system — A slop oil recovery system is a method and the equipment used for cleaning and disposing of mixtures of oil, chemicals, and water from various sources in a refinery or oilfield.
- sodium hexametaphosphate — See under Calgon.
- special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
- split image range finder — a range finder in which opposing halves of a split field move relative to each other and coincide when the object centered in the field is in focus.
- stratified random sample — a random sample of a population in which the population is first divided into distinct subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then taken separately from each stratum.
- tear someone off a strip — to rebuke (someone) angrily
- the realm of possibility — If you say that something is not beyond the realms of possibility, you mean that it is possible.
- thompson sub-machine-gun — a .45 calibre sub-machine-gun
- to cramp someone's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behaviour in some way.
- to keep something at bay — If you keep something or someone at bay, or hold them at bay, you prevent them from reaching, attacking, or affecting you.
- to make up for lost time — If someone is making up for lost time, they are doing something actively and with enthusiasm because they have not had the opportunity to do it before or when they were younger.
- to pick someone's brains — If you pick someone's brains, you ask them to help you with a problem because they know more about the subject than you.
- to pick someone's pocket — If someone picks your pocket, they steal something from your pocket, usually without you noticing.
- to speak well of someone — If you speak well of someone or speak highly of someone, you say good things about them. If you speak ill of someone, you criticize them.
- trisodium orthophosphate — a sodium salt of orthophosphoric acid having the formula Na3PO4
- tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
- visual component library — (programming) VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
- when push comes to shove — to press upon or against (a thing) with force in order to move it away.