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20-letter words containing a, v, e

  • environment variable — (programming, operating system)   A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
  • environmental health — the issues dealt with by the Environmental Health Department of a local authority, such as prevention of the spread of communicable diseases, food safety and hygiene, control of infestation by insects or rodents, etc
  • environmental impact — the impact on the environment created by an industry, service, plan, or project
  • equivalence relation — (mathematics)   A relation R on a set including elements a, b, c, which is reflexive (a R a), symmetric (a R b => b R a) and transitive (a R b R c => a R c). An equivalence relation defines an equivalence class. See also partial equivalence relation.
  • equivalent air speed — the speed at sea level that would produce the same Pitot-static tube reading as that measured at altitude
  • every bit as good as — You say that one thing is every bit as good, interesting, or important as another to emphasize that the first thing is just as good, interesting, or important as the second.
  • faculty of advocates — the college or society of advocates in Scotland
  • federal reserve bank — a U.S. federal banking system that is under the control of a central board of governors (Federal Reserve Board) with a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) in each of 12 districts and that has wide powers in controlling credit and the flow of money as well as in performing other functions, as regulating and supervising its member banks.
  • federal reserve note — a form of paper money issued by a Federal Reserve Bank.
  • five-a-side football — a version of soccer with five players in each team
  • five-star restaurant — a restaurant which has been given the top star-rating
  • flavour of the month — If you think that something or someone is very popular at a particular time, you can say that they are flavour of the month.
  • formative assessment — ongoing assessment of a pupil's educational development within a particular subject area
  • frederick william iv — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
  • front-end volatility — Front-end volatility is the ability of the fractions with lower boiling points, such as butane, to evaporate at normal temperatures.
  • garcilaso de la vega — 1503?–36, Spanish poet.
  • general public virus — (software, legal)   A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
  • generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
  • generative semantics — a theory of generative grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can then be derived using only one set of rules that relate underlying meaning and surface form rather than separate sets of semantic and syntactic rules.
  • gingival hyperplasia — Gingival hyperplasia is abnormal enlargement of the gums.
  • give a wide berth to — to keep clear of; avoid
  • give one's right arm — to be prepared to make any sacrifice
  • give someone the air — a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and minute amounts of other gases that surrounds the earth and forms its atmosphere.
  • governador valadares — a city in E Brazil.
  • gravimetric analysis — analysis by weight.
  • great dividing range — a mountain range extending along the E coast of Australia: vast watershed region. 100 to 200 miles (160–320 km) wide.
  • great northern diver — a large northern bird, Gavia immer, with a black-and-white chequered back and a black head and neck in summer: family Gaviidae (divers)
  • grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
  • guided visualization — a relaxation technique in which words, sounds, etc., are used to evoke positive mental images, feelings, and thoughts.
  • harvard architecture — (architecture)   A computer architecture in which program instructions are stored in different memory from data. Each type of memory is accessed via a separate bus, allowing instructions and data to be fetched in parallel. Contrast: von Neumann architecture.
  • have an itching palm — to desire money greedily
  • have come a long way — If you say that someone or something has come a long way, you mean that they have developed, progressed, or become very successful.
  • have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
  • heat of vaporization — the heat absorbed per unit mass of a given material at its boiling point that completely converts the material to a gas at the same temperature: equal to the heat of condensation.
  • hildegard von bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
  • in the driver's seat — If you say that someone is in the driver's seat, you mean that they are in control in a situation.
  • in the event of/that — You use in the event of, in the event that, and in that event when you are talking about a possible future situation, especially when you are planning what to do if it occurs.
  • in-service education — training and education given to employed teachers throughout their career
  • independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
  • inductive statistics — the branch of statistics dealing with conclusions, generalizations, predictions, and estimations based on data from samples.
  • information overload — an excess of incoming information, as might confront a pedestrian on a crowded city street, that forces one to be selective in the information received and retained.
  • inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
  • intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
  • intravenous drug use — the injection of drugs intravenously
  • inventory adjustment — Inventory adjustments are increases or decreases made in inventory to account for theft, loss, breakages, and errors in the amount or number of items received.
  • japanese river fever — an infectious disease occurring chiefly in Japan and the East Indies, caused by the organism Rickettsia tsutsugamushi, transmitted by mites through biting.
  • java development kit — (language, compiler)   (JDK) A free Sun Microsystems product which provides the environment required for programming in Java. The JDK is available for a variety of platforms, but most notably Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows.
  • java message service — (programming, messaging)   (JMS) An API for accessing enterprise messaging systems from Java programs. Java Message Service, part of the J2EE suite, provides standard APIs that Java developers can use to access the common features of enterprise message systems. JMS supports the publish/subscribe and point-to-point models and allows the creation of message types consisting of arbitrary Java objects. JMS provides support for administration, security, error handling, and recovery, optimisation, distributed transactions, message ordering, message acknowledgment, and more.
  • java virtual machine — (language, architecture)   (JVM) A specification for software which interprets Java programs that have been compiled into byte-codes, and usually stored in a ".class" file. The JVM instruction set is stack-oriented, with variable instruction length. Unlike some other instruction sets, the JVM's supports object-oriented programming directly by including instructions for object method invocation (similar to subroutine call in other instruction sets). The JVM itself is written in C and so can be ported to run on most platforms. It needs thread support and I/O (for dynamic class loading). The Java byte-code is independent of the platform. There are also some hardware implementations of the JVM.
  • jordan curve theorem — the theorem that the complement of a simple closed curve can be expressed as the union of two disjoint sets, each having as boundary the given curve.
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