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21-letter words containing s, y, a

  • 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.
  • jacques yves cousteau — Jacques Yves [zhahk eev] /ʒɑk iv/ (Show IPA), 1910–97, French naval officer, author, and underseas explorer: developed the Aqua-Lung.
  • junior varsity sports — sports played at the second highest rank for university sports, ranking first after varsity
  • keyboard send receive — (hardware)   (KSR) Part of a designation for a hard-copy terminal, manufactured by Teletype Corporation. The KSR range were lower cost versions of the ASR models.
  • korsakoff's psychosis — a mental illness involving severe confusion and inability to retain recent memories, usually caused by alcoholism
  • lactate dehydrogenase — an enzyme that catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate, an important step in carbohydrate metabolism: elevated serum levels indicate injury to kidney, skeletal muscle, or heart muscle. Abbreviation: LDH.
  • lady macbeth strategy — a strategy in a takeover battle in which a third party makes a bid acceptable to the target company, appearing to act as a white knight but subsequently joining forces with the original (unwelcome) bidder
  • lady murasaki shikibu — Lady, 978?–1031? Japanese poet and novelist.
  • lady of the camellias — French La Dame aux Camélias. a novel (1848) and play (1852) by Alexandre Dumas fils.
  • lady windermere's fan — a comedy (1892) by Oscar Wilde.
  • lafayette, marquis de — Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier [ma-ree zhaw-zef pawl eev rawk zheel-ber dy maw-tyey] /maˈri ʒɔˈzɛf pɔl iv rɔk ʒilˈbɛr dü mɔˈtyeɪ/ (Show IPA), Marquis de. Also, La Fayette. 1757–1834, French soldier, statesman, and liberal leader, who served in the American Revolutionary Army as aide-de-camp to General Washington, and took a leading part in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830.
  • law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
  • lay at someone's door — a movable, usually solid, barrier for opening and closing an entranceway, cupboard, cabinet, or the like, commonly turning on hinges or sliding in grooves.
  • like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
  • locally compact space — a topological space in which each point has a neighborhood that is compact.
  • macgillicuddy's reeks — a mountain range in County Kerry, SW Ireland. Highest peak (also highest in Ireland), Carrantuohill, 3414 feet (1041 meters).
  • macintosh file system — (file system)   A file on the Macintosh consists of two parts, called forks. The "data fork" contains the data which would normally be stored in the file on other operating systems. The "resource fork" contains a collection of arbitrary attribute/value pairs, including program segments, icon bitmaps, and parametric values. Yet more information regarding Macintosh files is stored by the Finder in a hidden file, called the "Desktop Database". Because of the complications in storing different parts of a Macintosh file in non-Macintosh file systems that only handle consecutive data in one part, it is common to only send the Data fork or to convert the Macintosh file into some other format before transferring it.
  • magnetic flux density — Also called magnetic flux density. a vector quantity used as a measure of a magnetic field. Symbol: B.
  • magnetofluid dynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • majority shareholding — a holding of more than half a company's shares
  • make yourself at home — settle in
  • mask read-only memory — (storage)   (MROM) A kind of ROM in which the memory contents are determined by one of the masks used to manufacture the integrated circuit. MROM can give high storage density (bits per millimeter squared) making it a cheap solution for high volume applications.
  • mauna kea observatory — an astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, situated at an altitude of 13,600 feet (4145 meters).
  • mayor of casterbridge — a novel (1886) by Thomas Hardy.
  • mechanical solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on shared activities, beliefs, and experiences and is characteristic of simple traditional societies.
  • methylisothiazolinone — (chemistry) A powerful biocide and preservative within the group of isothiazolinones, used in shampoos etc.
  • modulus of elasticity — the ratio of the stress applied to a body or substance to the resulting strain within the elastic limit
  • mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
  • mucopolysaccharidosis — Any of a group of metabolic disorders caused by the absence or malfunction of lysosomal enzymes needed to break down glycosaminoglycans.
  • multichannel analyser — an electronic instrument, such as a pulse height analyser, that splits an input waveform into a large number of channels in accordance with a particular parameter of the input
  • munchausen's syndrome — a mental disorder in which a patient feigns illness to obtain hospital treatment
  • muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
  • new year's resolution — If you make a New Year's resolution, you make a decision at the beginning of a year to start doing something or to stop doing something.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • nitrosylsulfuric acid — a clear, straw-colored, oily, corrosive liquid, HNO 5 S, used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes.
  • one-dimensional array — (types)   An array with only one dimension; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer index that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector. It should not be confused with a list. In some languages, e.g. Perl, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of pointers to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain address boundaries, e.g. machine words, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element.
  • one-way hash function — (algorithm)   (Or "message digest function") A one-way function which takes a variable-length message and produces a fixed-length hash. Given the hash it is computationally infeasible to find a message with that hash; in fact one can't determine any usable information about a message with that hash, not even a single bit. For some one-way hash functions it's also computationally impossible to determine two messages which produce the same hash. A one-way hash function can be private or public, just like an encryption function. MD5, SHA and Snefru are examples of public one-way hash functions. A public one-way hash function can be used to speed up a public-key digital signature system. Rather than sign a long message, which can take a long time, compute the one-way hash of the message, and sign the hash.
  • 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.
  • otorhinolaryngologist — (medicine) Doctor specializing in otorhinolaryngology, the study of ear, nose, and throat.
  • overuse strain injury — (medical)   (Or "repetitive strain injury", RSI, "repetitive strain disorder") Any tendon or muscle injury resulting from overuse, usually in the hand, wrist, or arm. Injury may be caused by any combination of repetitive, unacustomed, or prolonged movements, forcefulness, or an awkward position (often due to bad ergonomics). The symptoms are pain, tingling, weakness, numbness, swelling, cracking, stiffness, or reduced coordination. Common conditions are: Carpal tunnel syndrome, where swelling of the membrane linings in your wrist surrounding the tendons that bend your fingers compresses the median nerve. This may result in numbness and pain in the hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. Tennis elbow, where rotating your wrist and using force causes a form of epicondylitis. Tendinitis, where unacustomed exercise or repeated awkward movements inflame wrist, elbow, or shoulder tendons, often leading to severe stiffness. Trigger finger, a popping or catching sensation when you bend your finger, wrist, or shoulder. This form of tenosynovitis is caused by repetitive hand movements. To prevent the condition worsening, treat the pain with heat, cold, or aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium; rest; or immobilise the injured area with a splint or bandage. See a doctor.
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • past its sell-by date — the last date on which perishable food should be sold, usually established with some allowance for home storage under refrigeration. Compare shelf life.
  • payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
  • pdp assembly language — (language)   (PAL) The assembly language for the PDP-8 and PDP-11.
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
  • physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
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