22-letter words containing s, i, y
- microspectrophotometry — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
- 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.
- mind your own business — an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming.
- mind-your-own-business — baby's-tears.
- monday morning disease — azoturia (def 2).
- mother carey's chicken — any of various small petrels, especially the stormy petrel, Oceanites oceanicus.
- native language system — (NLS) A set of interfaces specified by X/Open for developing applications to run in different natural language environments.
- nicky nicky nine doors — the practice of knocking on a door or ringing a doorbell and running away before it is answered
- nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
- non-hodgkin's lymphoma — Pathology. any of several malignancies of the lymphatic system in which the cells characteristic of Hodgkin's disease are absent.
- oak processionary moth — a moth, (Thaumetopoea processionea), of the family Thaumetopoeidae, the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- on the way/on it's way — If something is on the way, it will arrive soon.
- once bitten, twice shy — You say 'once bitten, twice shy' when you want to indicate that someone will not do something a second time because they had a bad experience the first time they did it.
- ousterhout's dichotomy — (language) John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
- paracoccidioidomycosis — a chronic infection caused by the fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, occurring in Mexico and in Central and South America, characterized by mouth and throat ulcers, weight loss, and lesions on the skin, intestines, and genitals.
- paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
- passive matrix display — (hardware) A type of liquid crystal display which relies on persistence to maintain the state of each display element (pixel) between refresh scans. The resolution of such displays is limited by the ratio between the time to set a pixel and the time it takes to fade. Contrast active matrix display.
- philosophical analysis — linguistic analysis.
- 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
- planetary transmission — A planetary transmission is a special form of geared drive in which the input and output shafts are on the same axis.
- plastic pin grid array — (hardware, processor) (PPGA) The package used for certain Intel Celeron processors. PPGA processors fit into Socket 370 motherboard sockets. The Plastic Pin Grid Array packaging is similar to that used on Pentium processors. The silicon core is covered by a heat slug that faces down toward the motherboard. The Celeron 300A to the 533 use a PPGA package. The Celeron 566 onward use a FC-PGA package. Celeron processors are also available in Slot 1 SEPP packaging.
- play into the hands of — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
- play one's cards right — a usually rectangular piece of stiff paper, thin pasteboard, or plastic for various uses, as to write information on or printed as a means of identifying the holder: a 3″ × 5″ file card; a membership card.
- pneumocystis pneumonia — a pulmonary infection caused by the protozoan Pneumocystis carinii, occurring as an opportunistic disease in persons with impaired immune systems, as AIDS victims. Abbreviation: PCP.
- potassium ferricyanide — a bright-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 3 Fe(CN) 6 , used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, as Prussian blue, and of paper, especially blueprint paper.
- potassium ferrocyanide — a lemon-yellow, crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 4 Fe(CN) 6 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in casehardening alloys having an iron base and in dyeing wool and silk.
- preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
- pressure relief system — A pressure relief system is a device or method for reducing pressure in vessels, stages, or equipment when pressure has increased above a particular limit.
- probationary assistant — a teacher in the first probationary years
- process cinematography — cinematography in which the main or foreground action or scene is superimposed on or combined with simulated or separately filmed background action or scenery to produce special visual effects.
- prothonotary apostolic — a member of the first college of prelates of the Roman Curia.
- psychological thriller — book, movie: suspense story
- pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.
- pyridostigmine bromide — a cholinesterase inhibitor, C 9 H 1 3 BrN 2 O 2 , used in its bromide form in the treatment of myasthenia gravis.
- quantum chromodynamics — a quantum field theory that describes quarks and gluons and their interactions, with the color of the quarks playing a role analogous to that of electric charge. Abbreviation: QCD. Also called chromodynamics. Compare color (def 18).
- reconstructive surgery — the restoration of appearance and function following injury or disease, or the correction of congenital defects, using the techniques of plastic surgery.
- research systems, inc. — (RSI) Distributors of Interactive Data Language (IDL).
- rheumatoid spondylitis — ankylosing spondylitis.
- rocky mountain oysters — mountain oyster.
- rural delivery service — mail delivery operated primarily to deliver and collect mail in rural communities with no other convenient postal facilities.
- safety integrity level — A safety integrity level is a relative level of risk reduction.
- safety-critical system — A computer, electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may cause injury or death to human beings. E.g. an aircraft or nuclear power station control system. Common tools used in the design of safety-critical systems are redundancy and formal methods. See also aeroplane rule.
- sapir-whorf hypothesis — a theory developed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf that states that the structure of a language determines or greatly influences the modes of thought and behavior characteristic of the culture in which it is spoken.
- satisfiability problem — A problem used as an example in complexity theory. It can be stated thus: Given a Boolean expression E, decide if there is some assignment to the variables in E such that E is true. A Boolean expression is composed of Boolean variables, (logical) negation (NOT), (logical) conjunction (AND) and parentheses for grouping. The satisfiability problem was the first problem to be proved to be NP-complete (by Cook).
- saturday night special — a cheap, small-caliber handgun that is easily obtainable and concealable.
- saturday-night special — a cheap, small-caliber handgun that is easily obtainable and concealable.
- schachter's hypothesis — (web) The observation that "Given two unrelated technical terms, an Internet search engine will retrieve only résumés". This was first formulated by Joshua Eli Schachter in about 1998, while poring over the uniformly irrelevant pages that resulted from a search he'd run on "+Perl +MAPI" in Altavista.
- secondary articulation — coarticulation (def 2).
- secondary-articulation — concomitance of articulation, as in fro, ostensibly a succession of three discrete sounds but physically a single articulation (f-) blending into a coarticulation (-fr-), which blends into an articulation (-r-), which blends into a coarticulation (-ro-), which blends into an articulation (-o).