24-letter words containing le
- one thing led to another — You say one thing led to another when you are explaining how something happened, but you do not really want to give the details or you think people will be able to imagine the details.
- parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
- parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool) (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
- people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
- polish people's republic — former name of Poland.
- portable document format — (file format) (PDF) The native file format for Adobe Systems' Acrobat. PDF is the file format for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. A PDF file can describe documents containing any combination of text, graphics, and images in a device-independent and resolution independent format. These documents can be one page or thousands of pages, very simple or extremely complex with a rich use of fonts, graphics, colour, and images.
- portable scheme debugger — (PSD) A package for source code debugging of R4RS-compliant Scheme under GNU Emacs by Kellom ?ki Pertti <[email protected]>. Version 1.1. Distributed under GNU GPL. It works with scm, Elk and Scheme->C.
- privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
- program information file — (file format) Under Windows, a file providing information on how a non-Windows application program should be run, including how much memory should be allocated to it and what graphics interface it requires.
- programmable array logic — (hardware) (PAL) A family of fuse-programmable logic integrated circuits originally developed by MMI. Registered or combinatorial output functions are modelled in a sum of products form. Each output is a sum (logical or) of a fixed number of products (logical and) of the input signals. This structure is well suited for automatic generation of programming patterns by logic compilers. PAL devices are programmed by blowing the fuses permanently using overvoltage. Today, more complex devices based on the same original architecture are available (CPLD's for Complex PLD's) that incorporate the equivalent of several original PAL chips. PAL chips are, however, still popular due to their high speed.
- public access television — television in which local producers or individuals can participate
- public-access television — a noncommercial system of broadcasting on television channels made available to independent or community groups for programs of general interest to the community.
- quadrature of the circle — the insoluble problem of constructing, by the methods of Euclidean geometry, a square equal in area to a given circle.
- rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
- renewable term insurance — Renewable term insurance is term life insurance that may be renewed for another period without the policyholder needing to provide further evidence of their insurability.
- resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
- rose-coloured spectacles — If you look at a person or situation through rose-coloured glasses or rose-tinted glasses, you see only their good points and therefore your view of them is unrealistic. In British English, you can also say that someone is looking through rose-coloured spectacles.
- san joaquin valley fever — coccidioidomycosis.
- scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web) A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
- selective service system — the U.S. federal agency that facilitates the mobilization of military forces by requiring the registration of males between the ages of 18 and 26 years. Abbreviation: SSS.
- self-extensible language — ["SEL - A Self-Extensible Programming Language", G. Molnar, Computer J 14(3):238-242 (Aug 1971)].
- single connection attach — (hardware) (SCA, "Single Connector Attachment") A non-standard type of SCSI connector, used mostly by OEMs, which carries both power and data on one 80-pin connector. SCA SCSI drives tend to be cheaper but use with standard SCSI cables requires an adaptor and external termination.
- single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
- single person supplement — an additional sum of money that a hotel charges for one person to stay in a room meant for two people
- single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
- single transferable vote — of or relating to a system of voting in which voters list the candidates in order of preference. Any candidate achieving a predetermined proportion of the votes in a constituency is elected. Votes exceeding this amount and those cast for the bottom candidate are redistributed according to the stated preferences. Redistribution continues until all the seats are filled
- skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
- st.-bruno-de-montarville — a town in S Quebec, in E Canada, near Montreal.
- stratified random sample — a random sample of a population in which the population is first divided into distinct subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then taken separately from each stratum.
- tagged image file format — (file format, graphics) (TIFF) A file format used for still-image bitmaps, stored in tagged fields. Application programs can use the tags to accept or ignore fields, depending on their capabilities. While TIFF was designed to be extensible, it lacked a core of useful functionality, so that most useful functions (e.g. lossless 24-bit colour) requires nonstandard, often redundant, extensions. The incompatibility of extensions has led some to expand "TIFF" as "Thousands of Incompatible File Formats". Compare GIF, PNG, JPEG.
- teacher training college — a higher-education college that specializes in teacher training
- telephony user interface — (communications) (TUI) Either a software interface to telephony (e.g. a phone-capable PC) or a DTMF-based interface to software (e.g. voicemail).
- telescope user interface — (hardware, interface) (TUI) A remote control interface for a telescope.
- the least i could/can do — You use expressions like 'that's the least that I can do' to mean that you are very willing to do it, or to acknowledge someone's thanks.
- the netherlands antilles — two groups of islands in the Caribbean, in the Lesser Antilles: a former constituent country of the Netherlands (since 2010 each island has had a separate status), consisting of the S group of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire, and the N group of Saint Eustatius, Saba, and the S part of Saint Martin; economy based on refining oil from Venezuela. Pop: 222 000 (2004 est). Area: 996 sq km (390 sq miles)
- the star-spangled banner — Stars and Stripes.
- the whole shooting match — everything; the whole lot
- thorn in your side/flesh — If you describe someone or something as a thorn in your side or a thorn in your flesh, you mean that they are a continuous problem to you or annoy you.
- three-spined stickleback — a small teleost fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, of the family Gasterosteidae, of rivers and coastal regions, having three spines along the back and occurring in cold and temperate northern regions
- to cramp someone's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behaviour in some way.
- to fight a losing battle — If you are fighting a losing battle, you are trying to achieve something but are not going to be successful.
- to keep your eyes peeled — If you tell someone to keep their eyes peeled for something, you are telling them to watch very carefully for it.
- to let sleeping dogs lie — If someone tells you to let sleeping dogs lie, they are warning you not to disturb or interfere with a situation, because you are likely to cause trouble and problems.
- to rise to the challenge — If someone rises to the challenge, they act in response to a difficult situation which is new to them and are successful.
- transcendental dialectic — (in transcendental logic) the study of the fallacious attribution of objective reality to the perceptions by the mind of external objects. Compare dialectic (def 8).
- tricarboxylic acid cycle — Krebs cycle.
- van allen radiation belt — a broad, doughnut-shaped region surrounding the earth and composed of high-energy electrons and protons trapped in the earth's magnetic field at heights between c. 400 km (c. 250 mi) and c. 64,370 km (c. 40,000 mi)
- variable (interest) rate — an interest rate that varies in relation to fluctuations in the market rates of interest, as over the time period of a loan or mortgage
- variable pitch propeller — a propeller in which the angle of the blades with regard to air flow can be adjusted while it is in operation
- volume table of contents — (storage) (VTOC) /V-tock/ A special file on a disk, which contains a list of all the ordinary files on the disk and their addresses. Also called a directory. The term is used mostly with large mainframe disk drives. Storage administrators will often refer to the VTOC to obtain information on the number of files stored on a disk.