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18-letter words containing t, o, e, n

  • priority interrupt — (jargon)   Any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of hack mode. Classically used to describe being dragged away by an SO for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. Also called an NMI (non-maskable interrupt), especially in PC-land.
  • priority inversion — (parallel)   The state of a concurrent system where a high priority task is waiting for a low priority task which is waiting for a medium priority task. The system may become unstable and crash under these circumstances. In an operating system that uses multiple tasks, each task (or context) may be given a priority. These priorities help the scheduler decide which task to run next. Consider tasks, L, M, and H, with priorities Low, Medium, and High. M is running and H is blocked waiting for some resource that is held by L. So long as any task with a priority higher than L is runable, it will prevent task L, and thus task H, from running. Priority inversion is generally considered either as a high-level design failure or an implementation issue to be taken into account depending on who is talking. Most operating systems have methods in place to prevent or take inversion into account. Priority inheritance is one method. The most public instance of priority inversion is the repeated 'fail-safe' rebooting of the Mars Pathfinder. base station ('Sagan Memorial Station').
  • prison authorities — the people in charge of running a prison
  • process identifier — (operating system)   (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
  • processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • procrustean string — (programming)   A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
  • product acceptance — the verification or acceptance that a manufactured item meets required specifications or standards and is usable for its purpose
  • production manager — a supervisor of the budget, crew and other details in the production of a film or play
  • project management — leadership of a task or programme
  • projection machine — an apparatus that projects motion pictures; projector.
  • projection printer — enlarger.
  • prometheus unbound — a drama in verse (1820) by Shelley.
  • property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
  • proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
  • protease inhibitor — a drug that inhibits the action of protease, especially any of a class of antiviral drugs that prevent the cleavage and replication of HIV proteins.
  • protein deficiency — a lack or insuffiency of protein
  • protocol converter — (networking)   A device or program to translate between different protocols which serve similar functions (e.g. TCP and TP4). Some call this a "gateway", though others use that term for other kinds of internetworking device.
  • provincetown print — a print made from a woodblock incised with grooves that serve to separate the colors being used and to leave white lines highlighting the design.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
  • pseudoappendicitis — inflammation of the vermiform appendix.
  • pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
  • psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
  • psychotechnologist — a specialist in psychotechnology
  • ptomaine poisoning — (erroneously) food poisoning thought to be caused by ptomaine.
  • public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
  • puerto rico trench — a depression in the ocean floor, N of Puerto Rico: includes deepest part of Atlantic Ocean, 28,374 feet (8648 meters).
  • pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
  • puss in the corner — a parlor game for children in which one player in the middle of a room tries to occupy any of the positions along the walls that become vacant as other players dash across to exchange places at a signal.
  • put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
  • put one in mind of — to remind (one) of
  • put one's shirt on — to bet all one has on (a horse, etc)
  • put the mockers on — stop, thwart
  • qattara depression — a desert basin in the Libyan Desert, in NW Egypt: lowest point is 435 feet (133 meters) below sea level. 6950 sq. mi. (18,000 sq. km).
  • quadratic equation — an equation containing a single variable of degree 2. Its general form is ax 2 + bx + c = 0, where x is the variable and a, b, and c are constants (a ≠ 0).
  • quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
  • quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
  • quite the contrary — not at all, the very opposite
  • rabbit's-foot fern — hare's-foot fern.
  • rabbit-proof fence — a fence through which rabbits are unable to pass
  • racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
  • radiation exposure — exposure to radiant energy or to the particles emitted in the transfer of radiant energy, esp the particles and gamma rays emitted in nuclear decay; exposure to radioactive substances
  • radiation pressure — the pressure exerted on a surface by electromagnetic radiation or by sound waves.
  • radiation sickness — sickness caused by irradiation with x-rays or other nuclear radiation as a result of therapeutic treatment, accidental exposure, or a nuclear bomb explosion and characterized by nausea, vomiting, headache, cramps, diarrhea, loss of hair and teeth, destruction of white blood cells, and prolonged hemorrhage.
  • radioactive dating — any method of determining the age of earth materials or objects of organic origin based on measurement of either short-lived radioactive elements or the amount of a long-lived radioactive element plus its decay product.
  • radiometric dating — any method of determining the age of earth materials or objects of organic origin based on measurement of either short-lived radioactive elements or the amount of a long-lived radioactive element plus its decay product.
  • raffinate recovery — Raffinate recovery is the use of a substance which is left after a process is complete and the desired substances have been removed.
  • raman spectroscopy — a form of spectroscopy which uses the Raman effect for studying molecules
  • random walk theory — the theory that the future movement of share prices does not reflect past movements and therefore will not follow a discernible pattern
  • range of stability — the angle to the perpendicular through which a vessel may be heeled without losing the ability to right itself.
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