20-letter words containing s, p
- diammonium phosphate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble compound, (NH 4) 2 HPO 4 , used as fertilizer, in fire extinguishers, etc.
- diisobutyl phthalate — a clear, colorless liquid, C 14 H 26 O 4 , used chiefly as a plasticizer for nitrocellulose.
- diogenes (of sinope) — 412?-323? b.c.; Gr. philosopher: noted for founding the Cynical school of philosophy
- diophantine analysis — any of several methods for finding integral solutions for equations with more than one variable whose coefficients are integers.
- diplomatic secretary — secretary (def 5).
- diplomatic-secretary — secretary (def 5).
- disciplinary hearing — a hearing at which the conduct of a member of an organization, profession etc is examined and a punishment may be handed down
- dispersion hardening — the strengthening of an alloy as a result of the presence of fine particles in the lattice
- displacement current — the rate of change, at any point in space, of electric displacement with time.
- displacement tonnage — the number of long tons of water displaced by a vessel, light or load displacement being specified.
- disproportionateness — The state or quality of being disproportionate or out of proportion.
- disruptive discharge — the sudden, large increase in current through an insulating medium resulting from complete failure of the medium under electrostatic stress.
- distributed practice — learning with reasonably long intervals between separate occasions of learning
- doctor of philosophy — Also called doctorate. the highest degree awarded by a graduate school, usually to a person who has completed at least three years of graduate study and a dissertation approved by a board of professors.
- double decomposition — a reaction whose result is the interchange of two parts of two substances to form two new substances, as AgNO 3 + NaCl → AgCl + NaNO 3 .
- double-aspect theory — a monistic theory that holds that mind and body are not distinct substances but merely different aspects of a single substance
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- duck-billed platypus — platypus.
- due process (of law) — the course of legal proceedings established by the legal system of a nation or state to protect individual rights
- dun & bradstreet — an agency furnishing subscribers with information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses
- eastern roman empire — the eastern of the two empires created by the division of the Roman Empire in 395 ad
- eight queens problem — eight queens puzzle
- electrophysiological — Of or pertaining to electrophysiology.
- electroshock therapy — a form of shock therapy in which electric current is applied to the brain
- employee association — an organization, other than a trade union, whose members comprise employees of a single employing organization. The aims of the association may be social, recreational, or professional
- employer's liability — an employer's legal responsibility to pay damages to an employee who has been injured or who has contracted an illness because of the work he or she does
- enterprise javabeans — (specification, business, programming) (EJB) A server-side component architecture for writing reusable business logic and portable enterprise applications. EJB is the basis of Sun's Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Enterprise JavaBean components are written entirely in Java and run on any EJB compliant server. They are operating system, platform, and middleware independent, preventing vendor lock-in. EJB servers provide system-level services (the "plumbing") such as transactions, security, threading, and persistence. The EJB architecture is inherently transactional, distributed, multi-tier, scalable, secure, and wire protocol neutral - any protocol can be used: IIOP, JRMP, HTTP, DCOM etc. EJB 1.1 requires RMI for communication with components. EJB 2.0 is expected to require support for RMI/IIOP. EJB applications can serve assorted clients: browsers, Java, ActiveX, CORBA etc. EJB can be used to wrap legacy systems. EJB 1.1 was released in December 1999. EJB 2.0 is in development. Sun claims broad industry adoption. 30 vendors are shipping server products implementing EJB. Supporting vendors include IBM, Fujitsu, Sybase, Borland, Oracle, and Symantec. An alternative is Microsoft's MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server).
- epidural anaesthesia — numbing injection in the spine
- epitaxial transistor — a transistor made by depositing a thin pure layer of semiconductor material (epitaxial layer) onto a crystalline support by epitaxy. The layer acts as one of the electrode regions, usually the collector
- equivalent air speed — the speed at sea level that would produce the same Pitot-static tube reading as that measured at altitude
- essential complexity — (programming) A measure of the "structuredness" of a program.
- european social fund — one of the four Structural Funds of the European Union which aims to support employment and the economic and social well-being of EU member countries
- evening primrose oil — an oil, obtained from the seeds of the evening primrose, that is claimed to stimulate the production of prostaglandins
- explicit parallelism — A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which allows or forces the programmer to annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks. This is obviously more work for the programmer than a system with implicit parallelism (where the system decides automatically which parts to run in parallel) but may allow higher performance.
- external respiration — exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide across external or respiratory surfaces, as gills or lungs, in multicellular organisms
- feather in one's cap — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- field ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
- field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
- file descriptor leak — (programming) (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
- first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
- first world problems — If you say that someone has First World problems, you mean that their problems are not really very important.
- first-person shooter — a type of video game in which the player assumes the field of vision of the protagonist, so that the game camera includes the character's weapon, but the rest of the character model is not seen. Abbreviation: FPS.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- for sb's consumption — If you do or say something for a particular person's or group's consumption, you do or say it especially for them, although your private thoughts or plans may be very different.
- fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
- fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
- freedom of the press — the right to publish newspapers, magazines, and other printed matter without governmental restriction and subject only to the laws of libel, obscenity, sedition, etc.
- freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
- gaff-topsail catfish — a sea catfish, Bagre marinus, occurring in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico from Cape Cod to Panama, and having the spine of the dorsal fin greatly prolonged and flattened.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.