0%

22-letter words containing y, s

  • in one's own back yard — close at hand
  • in your wildest dreams — If you say that you could not imagine a particular thing in your wildest dreams, you are emphasizing that you think it is extremely strange or unlikely.
  • industrial archaeology — the study of past industrial machines, works, etc
  • industrialized country — a country characterized by industry on an extensive scale
  • intentionally homeless — without anywhere to leave because one has left accommodation voluntarily
  • 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.
  • joint density function — a function of two or more random variables from which can be obtained a single probability that all the variables in the function will take specified values or fall within specified intervals
  • 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.
  • keep one's eyes peeled — to watch vigilantly (for)
  • 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.
  • klinefelter's syndrome — an abnormal condition in which at least one extra X chromosome is present in a male: characterized by reduced or absent sperm production, small testicles, and in some cases enlarged breasts.
  • 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.
  • let bygones be bygones — past; gone by; earlier; former: The faded photograph brought memories of bygone days.
  • like nobody's business — extremely well or fast
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • merry wives of windsor — a comedy (1598–1602?) by Shakespeare.
  • 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.
  • methyl isobutyl ketone — a colorless, slightly water-soluble, flammable liquid, C 6 H 1 2 O, having a pleasant odor: used as a solvent for nitrocellulose, gums, resins, fats, waxes, and oils.
  • microspectrophotometry — a spectrophotometer for examining light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by minute objects.
  • 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.
  • mind your own business — an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming.
  • mind-your-own-business — baby's-tears.
  • monday morning disease — azoturia (def 2).
  • mother carey's chicken — any of various small petrels, especially the stormy petrel, Oceanites oceanicus.
  • native language system — (NLS) A set of interfaces specified by X/Open for developing applications to run in different natural language environments.
  • nicky nicky nine doors — the practice of knocking on a door or ringing a doorbell and running away before it is answered
  • nodal switching system — (NSS) Main routing nodes in the NSFnet backbone.
  • 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
  • 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
  • on the way/on it's way — If something is on the way, it will arrive soon.
  • once bitten, twice shy — You say 'once bitten, twice shy' when you want to indicate that someone will not do something a second time because they had a bad experience the first time they did it.
  • one-eyed trouser snake — a vulgar term for the male member; penis
  • ousterhout's dichotomy — (language)   John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • pay dearly/cost dearly — If you pay dearly for doing something or if it costs you dearly, you suffer a lot as a result.
  • philosophical analysis — linguistic analysis.
  • physiographic province — a geographic region in which climate and geology have given rise to an array of landforms different from those of surrounding regions.
  • pizza delivery service — a service whereby a pizza restaurant delivers pizzas to customers who order by telephone
  • planetary transmission — A planetary transmission is a special form of geared drive in which the input and output shafts are on the same axis.
  • plastic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (PPGA) The package used for certain Intel Celeron processors. PPGA processors fit into Socket 370 motherboard sockets. The Plastic Pin Grid Array packaging is similar to that used on Pentium processors. The silicon core is covered by a heat slug that faces down toward the motherboard. The Celeron 300A to the 533 use a PPGA package. The Celeron 566 onward use a FC-PGA package. Celeron processors are also available in Slot 1 SEPP packaging.
  • play into the hands of — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?