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24-letter words containing s, i, e, g, n

  • other things being equal — If you say 'other things being equal' or 'all things being equal' when talking about a possible situation, you mean if nothing unexpected happens or if there are no other factors which affect the situation.
  • parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
  • pin something on someone — to lay the blame for something on someone
  • plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
  • 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.
  • preparatory to doing sth — If one action is done preparatory to another, it is done before the other action, usually as preparation for it.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • professional programming — paranoid programming
  • 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.
  • progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
  • punch above one's weight — to do something that is considered to be beyond one's ability
  • recharge one's batteries — If you recharge a battery, you put an electrical charge back into the battery by connecting it to a machine that draws power from another source of electricity.
  • registered general nurse — (in Britain) a nurse who has completed a three-year training course in all aspects of nursing care to enable him or her to be registered with the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery, and Health Visiting
  • requirements engineering — (programming)   The task of capturing, structuring, and accurately representing the user's requirements so that they can be correctly embodied in systems which meet those requirements (i.e. are of good quality).
  • reverse annuity mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
  • see someone hanged first — to refuse absolutely to do what one has been asked
  • self-extensible language — ["SEL - A Self-Extensible Programming Language", G. Molnar, Computer J 14(3):238-242 (Aug 1971)].
  • self-fulfilling prophecy — a prophecy that comes true because of the expectation that it will
  • senegambia confederation — an economic and political union (1982–89) between Senegal and The Gambia
  • shadow foreign secretary — the member of the main opposition party in Parliament who would hold the office of Foreign Secretary if their party were in power
  • she is no spring chicken — she is no longer young
  • sign one's death warrant — to cause one's own destruction
  • single connection attach — (hardware)   (SCA, "Single Connector Attachment") A non-standard type of SCSI connector, used mostly by OEMs, which carries both power and data on one 80-pin connector. SCA SCSI drives tend to be cheaper but use with standard SCSI cables requires an adaptor and external termination.
  • single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
  • single person supplement — an additional sum of money that a hotel charges for one person to stay in a room meant for two people
  • single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
  • single transferable vote — of or relating to a system of voting in which voters list the candidates in order of preference. Any candidate achieving a predetermined proportion of the votes in a constituency is elected. Votes exceeding this amount and those cast for the bottom candidate are redistributed according to the stated preferences. Redistribution continues until all the seats are filled
  • solution based modelling — (SBM) A software development process described in the book "Developing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh" written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, published by Addison Wesley in 1992.
  • southern british english — the dialect of spoken English regarded as standard in England and considered as having high social status in comparison with other British English dialects. Historically, it is derived from the S East Midland dialect of Middle English
  • special checking account — a checking account that requires no minimum balance but in which a small charge is made for each check issued or drawn and for monthly maintenance.
  • 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.
  • st. kitts-nevis-anguilla — a former British colony (1967–71) in the Leeward Islands, in the E West Indies: comprising St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, and adjacent small islands: a member of the former West Indies Associated States.
  • staggered pin grid array — (hardware)   (SPGA) A style of integrated circuit socket or pin-out with a staggered grid of pins around the edge of the socket, positioned as several squares, one inside the other. SPGA is commonly used on motherboards for processors, e.g. Socket 5, Socket 7 and Socket 8. See also PGA.
  • stand in one's own light — to harm one's reputation by acting unwisely
  • standard housing benefit — a rebate of a proportion of a person's eligible housing costs paid by a local authority and calculated on the basis of level of income and family size
  • steak and kidney pudding — beefsteak and kidney in a suet pastry crust, steamed in a basin.
  • stereographic projection — a one-to-one correspondence between the points on a sphere and the extended complex plane where the north pole on the sphere corresponds to the point at infinity of the plane.
  • stratified charge engine — an internal-combustion engine in which a small charge of a rich fuel mixture is ignited first and used to improve combustion of a larger charge of a lean fuel mixture.
  • syquest technology, inc. — (company, hardware)   An early entrant into the removable hard disk market for personal computers. For may years SyQuest held the market, particularly as a method of transferring large desktop publisher documents to printers. SyQuest aim their products to give personal computer users "endless" hard drive space for data-intensive applications like desktop publishing, Internet information management, pre-press, multimedia, audio, video, digital photography, fast backup, data exchange, archiving, confidential data security and easy portability for the road. At the top of their current (Mar 1997) range are two drives, The SyJet 1.5 GB a 3.5 inch, double platter removable drive and the EZFlyer 230 MB also on 3.5 inch media. A cartridge holding over 4.7GB is promised before the end of 1997. In recent years they have not fared as well in the market, whilst Iomega has cornered the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market. Over the period 1995 to 1997 sales declined resulting in a series of losses. In the first quarter of 1997 these losses had been reduced to $6.8 million with net revenues increasing to $48.3 million. This compares to a net loss of $33.8 million, or $2.98 per share, on net revenues of $78.7 million for the same period the year before. It would appear that substantial restructuring has occurred over the past few years.
  • take sb under one's wing — If you take someone under your wing, you look after them, help them, and protect them.
  • take the king's shilling — to enlist in the army
  • that goes without saying — that is self-evident
  • the ravages of something — the destructive effects of something
  • the way things are going — You can use the way things are going to indicate that you expect something to happen because of the way the present situation is developing.
  • the whole shooting match — everything; the whole lot
  • thompson sub-machine-gun — a .45 calibre sub-machine-gun
  • thousand island dressing — a seasoned mayonnaise, often containing chopped pickles, pimientos, sweet peppers, hard-boiled eggs, etc.
  • throw one's weight about — to act in an authoritarian or aggressive manner
  • to fight a losing battle — If you are fighting a losing battle, you are trying to achieve something but are not going to be successful.
  • to go for the brass ring — to try to succeed in an area where there is a lot of competition
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