Reference

Glossary

Plain-English definitions of finance, tech, health, and PDF terms — no jargon.

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AUM: Assets Under Management — the total market value of investments a fund or financial institution manages on behalf of clients.
API: Application Programming Interface — a set of rules that allows different software applications to communicate with each other.
ATS: Applicant Tracking System — software used by companies to manage job applications, scan resumes for keywords, and rank candidates.

Base64: An encoding scheme that converts binary data (like files or images) into a text string using 64 printable ASCII characters.
BMI: Body Mass Index — a value calculated from a person's weight and height. BMI = weight (kg) / height² (m). A screening tool for weight category.

CAGR: Compound Annual Growth Rate — the mean annual growth rate of an investment over a time period, assuming profits are reinvested each year.
CTC: Cost to Company — the total amount an employer spends on an employee annually, including salary, PF, gratuity, and benefits.
CDN: Content Delivery Network — a network of servers distributed geographically to deliver web content faster to users based on their location.

DNS: Domain Name System — the internet's phone book, translating human-readable domain names (like google.com) into IP addresses.

ELSS: Equity Linked Savings Scheme — a type of mutual fund that qualifies for tax deduction under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act.
EMI: Equated Monthly Instalment — a fixed monthly payment made to repay a loan, comprising both principal and interest.
Epoch / Unix Timestamp: A system of time that counts the number of seconds elapsed since 1 January 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. Used in programming to represent time.

FD: Fixed Deposit — a financial instrument where money is deposited at a bank for a fixed period at a guaranteed interest rate.
Flatten PDF: Converting interactive elements (form fields, annotations) in a PDF into static, uneditable content.

GST: Goods and Services Tax — an indirect tax levied on the supply of goods and services in India.

HRA: House Rent Allowance — a component of salary provided by employers to cover rental expenses. It is partially or fully tax-exempt.

JWT: JSON Web Token — a compact, URL-safe token used to securely transmit information between parties. Used for authentication in web apps.

Lossless vs Lossy Compression: Lossless preserves all original data (PNG, ZIP). Lossy discards some data for smaller file sizes (JPEG, MP3). Lossy is smaller but irreversible.

Minification: The process of removing all unnecessary characters (spaces, comments, newlines) from source code to reduce file size without changing functionality.

NAV: Net Asset Value — the per-unit value of a mutual fund, calculated as total assets minus liabilities divided by the number of units.
NPS: National Pension System — a voluntary, long-term retirement savings scheme regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).

OCR: Optical Character Recognition — technology that converts images of text (scanned documents, photos) into machine-readable text.

PF / EPF: Provident Fund / Employees' Provident Fund — a retirement savings scheme where both employee and employer contribute 12% of basic salary each month.
PDF/A: A subset of the PDF format designed for long-term archiving, ensuring the document remains viewable without external dependencies.

QR Code: Quick Response Code — a machine-readable optical label containing information, readable by smartphone cameras.

Regex: Regular Expression — a sequence of characters that defines a search pattern. Used to find, validate, or replace text.
RMR / BMR: Resting/Basal Metabolic Rate — the number of calories your body needs at complete rest to maintain basic functions like breathing and circulation.

SIP: Systematic Investment Plan — investing a fixed amount regularly (monthly) in a mutual fund. It averages the purchase cost and benefits from compounding.
Systolic / Diastolic: Blood pressure values. Systolic (top number) is the pressure when your heart beats. Diastolic (bottom number) is the pressure between beats. Normal: 120/80 mmHg.
Sleep Cycles: The brain cycles through four stages of sleep roughly every 90 minutes. Waking mid-cycle causes grogginess; waking at the end feels refreshing.

TDS: Tax Deducted at Source — tax collected at the point of income generation (salary, interest, rent) and remitted to the government by the payer.
TDEE: Total Daily Energy Expenditure — the total number of calories your body burns in a day, accounting for activity level and metabolism.

UUID: Universally Unique Identifier — a 128-bit identifier used to uniquely identify information in software systems.

Watermark: A text or image overlay applied to documents or images to indicate ownership, confidentiality, or draft status.

XIRR: Extended Internal Rate of Return — a method to calculate return on investments with irregular cash flows, used for mutual funds with variable SIP amounts.