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22-letter words containing y, a

  • information technology — the development, implementation, and maintenance of computer hardware and software systems to organize and communicate information electronically. Abbreviation: IT.
  • intentionally homeless — without anywhere to leave because one has left accommodation voluntarily
  • intermediate frequency — the middle frequency in a superheterodyne receiver, at which most of the amplification takes place. Abbreviation: if.
  • 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.
  • justification by works — the belief that a person becomes just before God by the performance of good works: the doctrine against which Luther protested in inaugurating the Protestant Reformation.
  • katharine meyer graham — Katharine Meyer, 1917–2001, U.S. newspaper publisher.
  • ketamine hydrochloride — a powerful anesthetic, C13H16ClNO·HCl, used in surgery
  • kill yourself laughing — If you say that you killed yourself laughing, you are emphasizing that you laughed a lot because you thought something was extremely funny.
  • kinetic theory of heat — a theory that the temperature of a body is determined by the average kinetic energy of its particles and that an inflow of heat increases this energy.
  • knowledge-based system — (artificial intelligence)   (KBS) A program for extending and/or querying a knowledge base. The related term expert system is normally used to refer to a highly domain-specific type of KBS used for a specialised purpose such as medical diagnosis. The Cyc project is an example of a large KBS.
  • lady's not for burning — a verse play (1948) by Christopher Fry.
  • land of milk and honey — a land of unusual fertility and abundance.
  • law enforcement agency — an organization responsible for enforcing the law, such as a police or sheriff department
  • liberal democrat party — The Liberal Democrat Party is the third largest political party in Britain and the main centre party. It believes in improving the constitution and the voting system and in providing good welfare services.
  • limited access highway — expressway
  • liquid crystal display — (hardware)   (LCD) An electro-optical device used to display digits, characters or images, commonly used in digital watches, calculators, and portable computers. The heart of the liquid crystal display is a piece of liquid crystal material placed between a pair of transparent electrodes. The liquid crystal changes the phase of the light passing through it and this phase change can be controlled by the voltage applied between the electrodes. If such a unit is placed between a pair of plane polariser plates then light can pass through it only if the correct voltage is applied. Liquid crystal displays are formed by integrating a number of such cells, or more usually, by using a single liquid crystal plate and a pattern of electrodes. The simplest kind of liquid crystal displays, those used in digital watches and calculators, contain a common electrode plane covering one side and a pattern of electrodes on the other. These electrodes can be individually controlled to produce the appropriate display. Computer displays, however, require far too many pixels (typically between 50,000 and several millions) to make this scheme, in particular its wiring, feasible. The electrodes are therefore replaced by a number of row electrodes on one side and column electrodes on the other. By applying voltage to one row and several columns the pixels at the intersections are set. The pixels being set one row after the other, in passive matrix displays the number of rows is limited by the ratio of the setting and fading times. In the setup described above (known as "twisted nematic") the number of rows is limited to about 20. Using an alternative "supertwisted nematic" setup VGA quality displays (480 rows) can be easily built. As of 1995 most notebook computers used this technique. Fading can be slowed by putting an active element, such as a transistor, on the top of each pixel. This "remembers" the setting of that pixel. These active matrix displays are of much better quality (as good as CRTs) but are much more expensive than the passive matrix displays. LCDs are slimmer, lighter and consume less power than the previous dominant display type, the cathode ray tube, hence their importance for portable computers.
  • little lord fauntleroy — (italics) a children's novel (1886) by Frances H. Burnett.
  • lynx real-time systems — A company in Los Gatos, California who distribute LynxOS. E-mail: <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>. Address: 16780 Lark Avenue, Los Gatos, CA 95030, USA. Telephone:: +1 (408) 354 7770, +1 (800) 255 LYNX. Fax: +1 (408) 354 7085.
  • make a monkey (out) of — to make appear foolish or laughable
  • management consultancy — a company of professionals who are employed to help an organization improve efficiency and performance
  • manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
  • martin luther king day — the third Monday in January, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., commemorating the birthday (Jan. 15) of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • memory management unit — (hardware, memory management)   (MMU, "Paged Memory Management Unit", PMMU) A hardware device or circuit that supports virtual memory and paging by translating virtual addresses into physical addresses. The virtual address space (the range of addresses used by the processor) is divided into pages, whose size is 2^N, usually a few kilobytes. The bottom N bits of the address (the offset within a page) are left unchanged. The upper address bits are the (virtual) page number. The MMU contains a page table which is indexed (possibly associatively) by the page number. Each page table entry (PTE) gives the physical page number corresponding to the virtual one. This is combined with the page offset to give the complete physical address. A PTE may also include information about whether the page has been written to, when it was last used (for a least recently used replacement algorithm), what kind of processes (user mode, supervisor mode) may read and write it, and whether it should be cached. It is possible that no physical memory (RAM) has been allocated to a given virtual page, in which case the MMU will signal a "page fault" to the CPU. The operating system will then try to find a spare page of RAM and set up a new PTE to map it to the requested virtual address. If no RAM is free it may be necessary to choose an existing page, using some replacement algorithm, and save it to disk (this is known as "paging"). There may also be a shortage of PTEs, in which case the OS will have to free one for the new mapping. In a multitasking system all processes compete for the use of memory and of the MMU. Some memory management architectures allow each process to have its own area or configuration of the page table, with a mechanism to switch between different mappings on a process switch. This means that all processes can have the same virtual address space rather than require load-time relocation. An MMU also solves the problem of fragmentation of memory. After blocks of memory have been allocated and freed, the free memory may become fragmented (discontinuous) so that the largest contiguous block of free memory may be much smaller than the total amount. With virtual memory, a contiguous range of virtual addresses can be mapped to several non-contiguous blocks of physical memory. In early designs memory management was performed by a separate integrated circuit such as the MC 68851 used with the Motorola 68020 CPU in the Macintosh II or the Z8015 used with the Zilog Z80 family of processors. Later CPUs such as the Motorola 68030 and the ZILOG Z280 have MMUs on the same IC as the CPU.
  • 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.
  • microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
  • monday morning disease — azoturia (def 2).
  • mother carey's chicken — any of various small petrels, especially the stormy petrel, Oceanites oceanicus.
  • motorcycle combination — a motorcycle with a sidecar attached
  • mpeg-2.5 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format)   A non-standard extention of MPEG-2 audio layer 3 by FhG for lowest sampling rates (8-12 kHz) targeting bit rates from 16-32 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps).
  • myalgic encephalopathy — a condition characterized by painful muscles, extreme fatigue, and general debility, sometimes occurring as a sequel to viral illness
  • native language system — (NLS) A set of interfaces specified by X/Open for developing applications to run in different natural language environments.
  • nickel-cadmium battery — a storage battery, with an alkaline electrolyte, having nickel oxide as the positive element and cadmium as the negative.
  • nitrohydrochloric acid — aqua regia.
  • nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
  • non-euclidean geometry — geometry based upon one or more postulates that differ from those of Euclid, especially from the postulate that only one line may be drawn through a given point parallel to a given line.
  • non-hodgkin's lymphoma — Pathology. any of several malignancies of the lymphatic system in which the cells characteristic of Hodgkin's disease are absent.
  • 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
  • northern redbelly dace — any of the small, brightly colored North American freshwater cyprinids, especially Phoxinus oreas (northern redbelly dace) and P. erythrogaster (southern redbelly dace)
  • 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
  • obligational authority — the necessary authority that precedes budget spending by a government agency or department, granted by Congress through appropriations.
  • obtaining by deception — the offence of dishonestly obtaining the property of another by some deception or misrepresentation of facts
  • on a wing and a prayer — with only the slightest hope of succeeding
  • on the way/on it's way — If something is on the way, it will arrive soon.
  • one-eyed trouser snake — a vulgar term for the male member; penis
  • otorhinolaryngological — of or relating to the medical practice involving the ear, nose, and throat.
  • overstay one's welcome — to stay (at a party, on a visit, etc), longer than pleases the host or hostess
  • paracoccidioidomycosis — a chronic infection caused by the fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, occurring in Mexico and in Central and South America, characterized by mouth and throat ulcers, weight loss, and lesions on the skin, intestines, and genitals.
  • parliamentary election — an election to select the members of a national parliament
  • paroxysmal tachycardia — tachycardia that begins and subsides suddenly.
  • passive matrix display — (hardware)   A type of liquid crystal display which relies on persistence to maintain the state of each display element (pixel) between refresh scans. The resolution of such displays is limited by the ratio between the time to set a pixel and the time it takes to fade. Contrast active matrix display.
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