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22-letter words containing t, o, p, n

  • functional programming — (programming)   (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
  • geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
  • give a person what for — to punish or reprimand a person severely
  • give it up for someone — to applaud someone
  • go through one's paces — to show one's abilities, skills, etc.
  • government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
  • government expenditure — the overall public spending carried out by the government
  • government osi profile — (networking, standard)   (GOSIP) A subset of OSI standards specific to US Government procurements, designed to maximize interoperability in areas where plain OSI standards are ambiguous or allow excessive options.
  • governor winthrop desk — an 18th-century American desk having a slant front.
  • gravitational collapse — the final stage of stellar evolution in which a star collapses to a final state, as a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, when the star's nuclear reactions no longer generate enough pressure to balance the attractive force of gravity.
  • gross national product — the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced in a country during one year. Abbreviation: GNP.
  • gross written premiums — Gross written premiums are the total revenue from a contract expected to be received by an insurer before deductions for reinsurance or ceding commissions.
  • group of seventy-seven — the developing countries of the world
  • guanosine triphosphate — GTP.
  • help a person off with — to assist a person in the removal of (clothes)
  • hepatitis non-a, non-b — a disease of the liver that is clinically indistinguishable from hepatitis B but is caused by a retrovirus or retroviruslike agent.
  • high-speed net connect — (hardware, communications)   (HNC) A network interface unit for BS2000 mainframes based on Novell NetWare, supporting Ethernet and FDDI.
  • hold the purse strings — hold the purse strings, to have the power to determine how money shall be spent.
  • home improvement grant — a government grant for house improvements such as insulation, adding a bathroom, or urgent repairs
  • horizontal application — An application program common to different business processes, e.g. office automation. Compare vertical application.
  • horn-rimmed spectacles — spectacles with rims made of material resembling horn
  • hospital administrator — a person who works in the management team of a hospital
  • hybrid multiprocessing — (parallel)   (HMP) The kind of multitasking which OS/2 supports. HMP provides some elements of symmetric multiprocessing, using add-on IBM software called MP/2. OS/2 SMP was planned for release in late 1993.
  • ice-making compartment — a part of a refrigerator in which ice is made
  • immigration department — the government department responsible for laws regarding immigrants and immigration
  • imperative programming — imperative language
  • in anticipation of sth — If something is done in anticipation of an event, it is done because people believe that event is going to happen.
  • in the lap of the gods — If you say that a situation is in the lap of the gods, you mean that its success or failure depends entirely on luck or on things that are outside your control.
  • incremental repetition — repetition, with variation, of a refrain or other part of a poem, especially a ballad.
  • independent assortment — law of independent assortment.
  • independent contractor — self-employed or freelance worker
  • independent suspension — an automotive suspension system in which each wheel is attached to the frame independently, so that a road bump affecting one wheel has no effect on the others.
  • information processing — processing of information, especially the handling of information by computers in accordance with strictly defined systems of procedure.
  • initial program loader — (operating system)   (IPL) A bootstrap loader which loads the part of an operating system needed to load the remainder of the operating system.
  • intermetallic compound — a compound of two or more metals.
  • interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
  • interrogator-responsor — a radio or radar transceiver for sending a signal to a transponder and receiving and interpreting the reply.
  • isthmus of tehuantepec — the narrowest part of S Mexico, with the Bay of Campeche on the north coast and the Gulf of Tehuantepec (an inlet of the Pacific) on the south coast
  • jackpot winning ticket — a ticket that contains all the winning numbers in a lottery etc, allowing the owner of the ticket to claim the jackpot prize
  • java community process — (project)   (JCP) An organization controlled by Sun Microsystems to further the growth of the Java language and runtime. The JCP produces standards called Java Standard Requests, which are "requests" in the same sense as RFCs.
  • jump in with both feet — to enter into an activity or venture wholeheartedly
  • jump out of one's skin — to be very startled
  • last call optimisation — (programming)   (Or "tail call optimisation") Discarding the immediate calling context (call stack frame) when the last action of a function or procedure, A, is to call another function or procedure, B. B will then return directly to A's caller, or possibly further up the call stack if the optimisation has been applied to several consecutive calls. Last call optimisation allows arbitrarily deep nesting of procedure calls without consuming memory to store useless environments. This is particularly useful in the special case of tail recursion optimisation, where a procedure's last action is to call itself (possibly indirectly).
  • left-handed compliment — an ambiguous compliment
  • love-hate relationship — If you have a love-hate relationship with someone or something, your feelings towards them change suddenly and often from love to hate.
  • lowest common multiple — the smallest number that is a common multiple of a given set of numbers.
  • magnetic dipole moment — a measure of the magnetic strength of a magnet or current-carrying coil, expressed as the torque per unit magnetic-flux density produced when the magnet or coil is set with its axis perpendicular to the magnetic field
  • magnetic pole strength — Electricity. a measure of the force exerted by one face of a magnet on a face of another magnet when both magnets are represented by equal and opposite poles. Symbol: m.
  • make/prove one's point — If you make your point or prove your point, you prove that something is true, either by arguing about it or by your actions or behaviour.
  • mcculloch-pitts neuron — (artificial intelligence)   The basic building block of artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.
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