22-letter words containing s, t, o

mountain standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, seven hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
mutton dressed as lamb — If you describe a woman as mutton dressed as lamb, you are criticizing her for trying to look younger than she really is, in a way that you consider unattractive.
nassella tussock board — one of many local statutory organizations set up in different regions of New Zealand to eradicate the invasive nassella tussock weed
national semiconductor — (company) A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
natural classification — classification of organisms according to relationships based on descent from a common ancestor
navigational satellite — a satellite designed to enable operators of aircraft, vehicles, or vessels to determine their geographical position.
new zealand greenstone — a variety of nephrite from New Zealand, used as a gemstone
newton's law of motion — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
no room to swing a cat — If you say 'There's no room to swing a cat' or 'You can't swing a cat', you mean that the place you are talking about is very small or crowded.
nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
nominal semidestructor — (abuse) Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
non-constructive proof — (logic) (Or "existence proof") A proof that something exists that does not provide an example of that thing or a method for finding an example. (A constructive proof does provide such an example or method). For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0 there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A non-constructive proof might proceed by observing that as k changes continuously from 0 to 1, f(k) changes continuously from n to p and, since they lie either side of zero, f(k) must pass through zero for some intermediate value of k. This proof does not tell us what that value of k is, only that it exists.
non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
non-restrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
nondestructive testing — any of several methods of detecting flaws in metals without causing damage. The most common techniques involve the use of X-rays, gamma rays, and ultrasonic vibrations
nonmonetary advantages — the beneficial aspects of an employment, such as the stimulation of the work, attractiveness of the workplace, or its nearness to one's home, that do not reflect its financial remuneration
nonrepresentationalism — not resembling or portraying any object in physical nature: a nonrepresentational painting.
nonspecific urethritis — nongonococcal urethritis.
nonspecular reflection — the diffuse reflection of sound or light waves
north rhine-westphalia — a state in W Germany; formerly a part of Rhine province. 13,154 sq. mi. (34,070 sq. km). Capital: Düsseldorf.
not be sb's department — If you say that a task or area of knowledge is not your department, you mean that you are not responsible for it or do not know much about it.
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
object-oriented design — (programming) (OOD) A design method in which a system is modelled as a collection of cooperating objects and individual objects are treated as instances of a class within a class hierarchy. Four stages can be identified: identify the classes and objects, identify their semantics, identify their relationships and specify class and object interfaces and implementation. Object-oriented design is one of the stages of object-oriented programming.
object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
obstruction of justice — a criminal offence that involves attempting to obstruct the process of law
occupational therapist — professional who assists with rehabilitation
oceanic whitetip shark — whitetip shark (def 2).
of the first magnitude — of the greatest importance
on a shoestring budget — with very little money to spend
on someone's coattails — the back of the skirt on a man's coat or jacket.
on the crest of a wave — If you say that you are on the crest of a wave, you mean that you are feeling very happy and confident because things are going well for you.
on the part of someone — as far as someone is concerned
on the same wavelength — Physics. the distance, measured in the direction of propagation of a wave, between two successive points in the wave that are characterized by the same phase of oscillation.
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.
one's foot in the door — (in vertebrates) the terminal part of the leg, below the ankle joint, on which the body stands and moves.
one-eyed trouser snake — a vulgar term for the male member; penis
open source definition — (standard) (OSD) Definition of distribution terms for open source software, promoted by the Open Source Initiative.
open source initiative — (body) (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
open-market operations — the purchase and sale on the open market of government securities by the Bank of England for the purpose of regulating the supply of money and credit to the economy
operating instructions — instructions on how to use something (such an electrical appliance, etc)
operation desert storm — the codename for the US-led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraq (1991)
operational data store — (database) (ODS) A group of integrated databases designed to support the monitoring of operations. Unlike function oriented databases, an ODS contains subject-oriented, dynamic, current enterprise-wide information that is continually updated to show the current state of operations.
other side of the coin — a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as money.
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.
out-of-pocket expenses — expenses which are unbudgeted and paid for in cash
outline specifications — preliminary specifications or plans on which later plans are based
outside awareness port — (humour) (OAP) A humorous IBM term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the GUI kind.
over-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
overstay one's welcome — to stay (at a party, on a visit, etc), longer than pleases the host or hostess

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