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22-letter words containing t, r, a, v, n, c

  • 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.
  • judge advocate general — the chief legal officer of an army, navy, or air force.
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • name service switching — Domain Name System
  • negative reinforcement — form of conditioning
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • overstay one's welcome — to stay (at a party, on a visit, etc), longer than pleases the host or hostess
  • percussive maintenance — (jargon)   The fine art of whacking a device to get it working, possibly using a fine adjuster.
  • preventive maintenance — (PM) To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance, scratch monkey.
  • price variation clause — a clause in a contract allowing the seller to vary the selling price under certain conditions
  • private-equity company — an organization that uses private equity to gain control of and manage companies
  • productivity agreement — an agreement whereby the employees of an organization agree to changes which are intended to improve productivity in return for an increase in pay or other benefits
  • quantitative character — a character or trait that is transmitted by quantitative inheritance.
  • reactive schizophrenia — a type of schizophrenia of rapid onset and brief duration that occurs in response to environmental factors.
  • received pronunciation — the pronunciation of British English considered to have the widest geographical distribution and the fewest regional peculiarities, originally the pronunciation of educated speakers in southern England and traditionally that used in the public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge universities, adopted by many speakers elsewhere in England and widely used in broadcasting. Abbreviation: RP.
  • reproductive isolation — the conditions, as physiological or behavioral differences or geographical barriers, that prevent potentially interbreeding populations from cross-fertilization.
  • retroactive inhibition — the tendency for the retention of learned material or skills to be impaired by subsequent learning, esp by learning of a similar kind
  • reverse discrimination — the unfair treatment of members of majority groups resulting from preferential policies, as in college admissions or employment, intended to remedy earlier discrimination against minorities.
  • revolutionary calendar — the calendar of the French First Republic, adopted in 1793 and abandoned in 1805, consisting of 12 months, each of 30 days, and 5 intercalary days added at the end of the year (6 every fourth year). The months, beginning at the autumnal equinox, are Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor.
  • save the children fund — a development agency which raises money for deprived children around the world
  • selective transmission — a transmission in which the available forward and reverse gears may be engaged in any order, without passing progressively through the different changes of gear.
  • somatic nervous system — the section of the nervous system responsible for sensation and control of the skeletal muscles
  • the atlantic provinces — certain of the Canadian provinces with coasts facing the Gulf of St Lawrence or the Atlantic: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador
  • the maritime provinces — another name for the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, but often excluding Newfoundland and Labrador
  • the merchant of venice — a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.
  • the nature conservancy — a US charitable environmental organization, founded in 1951, that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive
  • to bend over backwards — If you say that someone is bending over backwards to be helpful or kind, you are emphasizing that they are trying very hard to be helpful or kind.
  • unconventional warfare — warfare that is conducted within enemy lines through guerrilla tactics or subversion, usually supported at least in part by external forces.
  • universal product code — a bar code that indicates price, product classification, etc., and can be read electronically, as at checkout counters in supermarkets. Abbreviation: UPC.
  • university of michigan — (body, education)   A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. 70% of the University's students graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. 90% rank in the top 20% of their high school class. 60% of the students receive financial aid. The main Ann Arbor Campus lies in the Huron River valley, 40 miles west of Detroit. The campus boasts 2700 acres with 200 buildings, six million volumes in 23 libraries, nine museums, seven hospitals, hundreds of laboratories and institutes, and over 18000 microcomputers.
  • upright vacuum cleaner — a vacuum cleaner that is tall rather than wide
  • valencia simple tasker — (operating system)   (VSTa) A small microkernel based Unix-like operating system, taking ideas from QNX and Plan 9, available under GPL.
  • verification principle — (in the philosophy of the logical positivists) the doctrine that nontautologous statements are meaningful only if it is in principle possible to establish empirically whether they are true or false
  • vitreoretinal traction — friction on the internal limiting membrane of the retina of the eye by adherent vitreous fibrils in vitreous humour detachment
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