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21-letter words containing a, l, e, r

  • transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
  • traveling salesperson — a representative of a business firm who travels in an assigned territory soliciting orders for a company's services.
  • trichloroacetaldehyde — chloral (def 1).
  • trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
  • triethyl orthoformate — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 16 O 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
  • triple superphosphate — superphosphate (def 2).
  • triple-superphosphate — Also called acid phosphate. a mixture of calcium acid phosphate and calcium sulfate prepared by treating phosphate rock with sulfuric acid: used chiefly as a fertilizer.
  • tubercular meningitis — an infection of the membranes of the central nervous system caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis; features can include fever, headache, and coma
  • ulster unionist party — a Northern Irish political party advocating the maintenance of union with the UK
  • ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
  • uncertainty principle — the principle of quantum mechanics, formulated by Heisenberg, that the accurate measurement of one of two related, observable quantities, as position and momentum or energy and time, produces uncertainties in the measurement of the other, such that the product of the uncertainties of both quantities is equal to or greater than h/ 2 π, where h equals Planck's constant.
  • undesirable discharge — a discharge under other than honorable conditions of a person from military service by administrative action.
  • universal affirmative — a proposition of the form “All S is P.” Symbol: A, a.
  • universal disk format — (storage, standard)   (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
  • university of iceland — (body, education)   The Home of Fjolnir.
  • up close and personal — face to face, intimately
  • venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
  • verbatim et literatim — word for word and letter for letter; in exactly the same words.
  • vertically challenged — short in stature.
  • virginia (rail) fence — a zigzag fence made of rails laid across one another at the ends
  • virtual device driver — (operating system)   (VxD) A device driver under Windows 3.x/Windows 95 running as part of the kernel and thus having access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes as well as raw access to the hardware. VxD's usually have the filename extension .386 under Windows 3.x and .vxd under Windows 95. VxD's written for Windows 3.x can be used under Windows 95 but not vice versa.
  • virtual memory system — (operating system)   (VMS) DEC's proprietary operating system originally produced for its VAX minicomputer. VMS V1 was released in August 1978. VMS was renamed "OpenVMS" around version 5.5. The first version of VMS on DEC Alpha was known as OpenVMS for AXP V1.0, and the correct way to refer to the operating system now is OpenVMS for VAX or OpenVMS for Alpha. The renaming also signified the fact that the X/Open consortium had certified OpenVMS as having a high support for POSIX standards. VMS is one of the most secure operating systems on the market (making it popular in financial institutions). It currently (October 1997) has the best clustering capability (both number and distance) and is very scalable with binaries portable from small desktop workstations up to huge mainframes. Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favourite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious.
  • vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.
  • voice-stress analyzer — a machine purported to detect stress in a human voice and to ascertain a person's truthfulness.
  • voluntary arrangement — a procedure enabling an insolvent company to come to an arrangement with its creditors and resolve its financial problems, often in compliance with a court order
  • volunteers of america — a religious reform and relief organization, similar to the Salvation Army, founded in New York City in 1896 by Ballington Booth, son of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Abbreviation: VOA.
  • warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
  • watenstedt-salzgitter — former name of Salzgitter.
  • water-vascular system — a system of closed, fluid-filled tubes and ducts of echinoderms used in clinging, locomotion, feeding, and respiration.
  • weak head normal form — (reduction, theory)   (WHNF) A lambda expression is in weak head normal form (WHNF) if it is a head normal form (HNF) or any lambda abstraction. I.e. the top level is not a redex. The term was coined by Simon Peyton Jones to make explicit the difference between head normal form (HNF) and what graph reduction systems produce in practice. A lambda abstraction with a reducible body, e.g. \ x . ((\ y . y+x) 2) is in WHNF but not HNF. To reduce this expression to HNF would require reduction of the lambda body: (\ y . y+x) 2 --> 2+x Reduction to WHNF avoids the name capture problem with its need for alpha conversion of an inner lambda abstraction and so is preferred in practical graph reduction systems. The same principle is often used in strict languages such as Scheme to provide call-by-name evaluation by wrapping an expression in a lambda abstraction with no arguments: D = delay E = \ () . E The value of the expression is obtained by applying it to the empty argument list:
  • weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
  • west university place — a city in SE Texas.
  • what the future holds — If you wonder what the future holds, you wonder what will happen in the future.
  • whistling in the dark — If you say that someone is whistling in the dark, you mean that they are trying to remain brave and convince themselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems.
  • white-knuckle paddler — an inexpert and timid canoeist.
  • wholesale price index — an indicator of price changes in the wholesale market
  • wildlife photographer — someone that specializes in taking photographs of wild animals, especially in their natural habitats, and plants
  • william of malmesbury — William of, William of Malmesbury.
  • william the conqueror — ("the Conqueror") 1027–87, duke of Normandy 1035–87; king of England 1066–87 (son of Robert I, duke of Normandy).
  • with a capital letter — (used to give emphasis to a statement)
  • xilinx netlist format — (language, electronics)   (XNF) A Hardware Description Language for electronic circuit design, developed by Xilinx, Inc..
  • yellow lady's-slipper — a showy orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, of eastern North America, having purple-tinged yellow flowers with an inflated lip petal.
  • yellow-rumped warbler — a common North American wood warbler, Dendroica coronata, having yellow spots on the rump, crown, and sides, including a white-throated eastern subspecies (myrtle warbler) and a yellow-throated western subspecies (Audubon's warbler)
  • yellow-throated vireo — an olive-green vireo, Vireo flavifrons, of eastern North America, having a bright yellow throat and breast.
  • your mileage may vary — (jargon)   (YMMV) The disclaimer American car manufacturers attached to EPA mileage ratings. A humourous way of saying that the thing under discussion will not necessarily give you the same results as the author. Often used to convey the hardware dependence of Unix freeware distributions.
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