NP-

   Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality of
   difficulty;  the  connotation  is  often `more so than it should be'.
   This  is  generalized  from  the  computer-science  terms NP-hard and
   NP-complete;  NP-complete  problems  all seem to be very hard, but so
   far  no  one  has  found  a  proof  that  they  are. NP is the set of
   Nondeterministic-Polynomial  problems, those that can be completed by
   a  nondeterministic  Turing  machine  in  an amount of time that is a
   polynomial  function  of  the  size  of the input; a solution for one
   NP-complete  problem  would  solve  all  the others. "Coding a BitBlt
   implementation to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying."

   Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading; there
   are  plenty  of  easy  problems in class NP. NP-complete problems are
   hard  not  because  they  are  in  class NP, but because they are the
   hardest problems in class NP.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {AI-complete}{brute force}]