0%

21-letter words containing s, p, i, n, e

  • in phase/out of phase — If two things are out of phase with each other, they are not working or happening together as they should. If two things are in phase, they are working or occurring together as they should.
  • in someone's presence — If you are in someone's presence, you are in the same place as that person, and are close enough to them to be seen or heard.
  • indicated horse-power — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
  • indo-australian plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising India and the Australian continent and adjacent suboceanic basins (the Tasman, South Australian, Mid-Indian, Cocos, and Australian basins); separated from the Eurasian Plate by the Java Trench, from the Pacific Plate by the Tonga-Kermadec Trench, and from the African Plate by a series of mid-ocean ridges (the Carlsberg, Mid-Indian, and Southeast Indian ridges).
  • induction loop system — a system enabling partially deaf people to hear dialogue and sound in theatres, cinemas, etc, consisting of a loop of wire placed round the perimeter of a designated area. This emits an electromagnetic signal which is picked up by a hearing aid
  • innateness hypothesis — the theory that humans are biologically equipped with a knowledge of certain universal elements of language structure that is brought into play in the course of native-language acquisition.
  • inner spring mattress — a mattress with a system of wire coils or springs inside for buoyancy or comfort purposes
  • insulin shock therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
  • integer specbaseratio — SPECbase_int92
  • interpersonal therapy — a type of psychotherapy that focuses on conflicts in one's personal relationships.
  • irish republican army — an underground Irish nationalist organization founded to work for Irish independence from Great Britain: declared illegal by the Irish government in 1936, but continues activity aimed at the unification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Abbreviation: IRA, I.R.A.
  • isopropylideneacetone — mesityl oxide.
  • keep one's voice down — If someone tells you to keep your voice down, they are asking you to speak more quietly.
  • keep someone guessing — If someone keeps you guessing, they do not tell you what you want to know.
  • leaning tower of pisa — a round, marble campanile in Pisa, Italy, begun in 1174 and now 17 feet (5.2 meters) out of the perpendicular in its height of 179 feet (54 meters).
  • least common multiple — lowest common multiple.
  • let sleeping dogs lie — a domesticated canid, Canis familiaris, bred in many varieties.
  • madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
  • magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
  • main-topsail schooner — a two-masted or three-masted schooner having square topsails on the foremast and mainmast: a jackass brig or jackass bark.
  • make a pig of oneself — If you say that someone is making a pig of themselves, you are criticizing them for eating a very large amount at one meal.
  • make one's peace with — the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.
  • manufacturing process — chain of production
  • marine superintendent — a person who is responsible for the maintenance of the vessels of a shipping line, for their docking and the handling of cargo, and for the hiring of personnel for deck departments.
  • mechanical suspension — the act of suspending.
  • medical jurisprudence — forensic medicine.
  • metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
  • modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
  • multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
  • national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
  • naturalization papers — documents confirming that someone has been awarded citizenship of a country he or she was not born in
  • negative prescription — the barring of adverse claims to property, etc, after a specified period of time has elapsed, allowing the possessor to acquire title
  • nuclear power station — a station or plant where nuclear energy is converted into heat, electricity, etc
  • old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
  • one-point perspective — a mathematical system for representing three-dimensional objects and space on a two-dimensional surface by means of intersecting lines that are drawn vertically and horizontally and that radiate from one point (one-point perspective) two points (two-point perspective) or several points on a horizon line as perceived by a viewer imagined in an arbitrarily fixed position.
  • open graphics library — (graphics, library)   (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • opposed-piston engine — a reciprocating engine, as a diesel engine, in which each cylinder has two pistons that move simultaneously away from or toward the center.
  • pacific standard time — See under standard time.
  • packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
  • paper-white narcissus — a white-flowered variety of Narcissus tazetta, often forced for indoor bloom.
  • path coverage testing — (testing)   Testing a program by examining which lines of executable code are visited (as in code coverage testing) and also the ways of getting to each line of code and the subsequent sequence of execution. Path coverage testing is the most comprehensive type of testing that a test suite can provide. It can find more bugs, especially those that are caused by data coupling. However, path coverage is hard and usually only used for small and/or critical sections of code.
  • pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
  • peephole optimisation — (compiler)   A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
  • percussion instrument — a musical instrument, as the drum, cymbal, triangle, xylophone, or piano, that is struck to produce a sound, as distinguished from string or wind instruments.
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • persistence of memory — a painting (1931) by Salvador Dali.
  • persistence of vision — the retention of a visual image for a short period of time after the removal of the stimulus that produced it: the phenomenon that produces the illusion of movement when viewing motion pictures.
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?