18-letter words containing a, g, u, s
- pygmy hippopotamus — a small hippopotamus, Choeropsis liberiensis, of forests and swamps in western Africa.
- quantity surveying — the action or profession of a person who estimates the cost of the materials and labour necessary for a construction job
- quevedo y villegas — Francisco Gómez de. 1580–1645, Spanish poet and writer, noted for his satires and the picaresque novel La historia de la vida del Buscón (1626)
- radius of gyration — the distance from an axis at which the mass of a body may be assumed to be concentrated and at which the moment of inertia will be equal to the moment of inertia of the actual mass about the axis, equal to the square root of the quotient of the moment of inertia and the mass.
- rear its ugly head — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- regular expression — 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
- regular tertiaries — of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
- sampling equipment — Sampling equipment is equipment which is used to remove small amounts of something for analysis and monitoring.
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- security agreement — business: contract
- self-raising flour — flour with baking powder
- self-understanding — mental process of a person who comprehends; comprehension; personal interpretation: My understanding of the word does not agree with yours.
- seven-league boots — mythical boots that allowed the wearer to travel seven leagues (a former unit of measurement), ie a great length, at each step
- shugart associates — (company) The disk drive company, founded by Alan F. Shugart, which developed SCSI. Alan left Shugart Associates in 1974 [did he quit or was he fired?]. Shugart Associates was bought, and eventually shut down by Xerox.
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- ski-mountaineering — a combination of the sports of skiing and mountaineering, for example by climbing up a mountain then skiing down it
- soft touch sealing — Soft touch sealing is a copolymer seal for a tank, with characteristics designed for softness, used instead of a metal seal to help avoid fire when sparks are generated.
- solid-fuel heating — heating that uses solid fuel, such as coal or coke
- sound spectrograph — an electronic device for recording a sound spectogram.
- spackling compound — spackle
- spaghetti junction — an interchange, usually between motorways, in which there are a large number of underpasses and overpasses and intersecting roads used by a large volume of high-speed traffic
- spare-part surgery — surgical replacement of defective or damaged organs by transplant or insertion of artificial devices
- specimen signature — a signature to be compared to an original signature in order to verify someone's identity
- stand one's ground — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- stirling's formula — a relation that approximates the value of n factorial (n!), expressed as .
- strangeness number — a quantum number, designating the strangeness of an elementary particle, equivalent to the hypercharge minus the baryon number
- structural geology — the branch of geology dealing with the structure and distribution of the rocks that make up the crust of the earth. Also called tectonics. Compare structure (def 7a).
- subliminal message — a message passed to the human mind without the mind being consciously aware of it, as, for example, in advertising
- submaxillary gland — submandibular gland.
- sugarloaf mountain — a mountain in SE Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. 1280 feet (390 meters).
- summary proceeding — a mode of trial authorized by statute to be held before a judge without the usual full hearing.
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- superciliary ridge — browridge.
- supporting actress — an actress playing a supporting role
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- sustaining program — a radio or television program without a commercial sponsor.
- the class struggle — the continual conflict between the capitalist and working classes for economic and political power
- the hunger marches — a number of processions by unemployed workers in the 1930s to protest against unemployment and deprivation
- to be caught short — If you are caught short or are taken short, you feel a sudden strong need to urinate, especially when you cannot easily find a toilet.
- ultrasonic testing — the scanning of material with an ultrasonic beam, during which reflections from faults in the material can be detected: a powerful nondestructive test method
- ultrasonic welding — the use of high-energy vibration of ultrasonic frequency to produce a weld between two components which are held in close contact
- under the aegis of — guided or protected by
- under-registration — the act of registering.