21-letter words containing a, l, r, o, u
- throw sb a curve ball — If someone throws you a curve or throws you a curve ball, they surprise you by doing something that you do not expect.
- to be hard luck on sb — to be unfortunate or unlucky for someone
- to lay down your life — If someone lays down their life for another person, they die so that the other person can live.
- to let your hair down — If you let your hair down, you relax completely and enjoy yourself.
- to rear its ugly head — If something unpleasant rears its head or rears its ugly head, it becomes visible or noticeable.
- to sow your wild oats — If a young person sows their wild oats, they behave in a rather uncontrolled way, especially by having a lot of sexual relationships.
- toussaint l'ouverture — François Dominique [frahn-swa dawmee-neek] /frɑ̃ˈswa dɔmiˈnik/ (Show IPA), 1743–1803, Haitian patriot and leader of the Haitian Revolution slave rebellion.
- 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.
- triangulation station — a point used in triangulation as a basis for making maps. Triangulation stations are marked in a number of ways, such as by a tapering stone pillar on a hilltop
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- voluntary association — a group of individuals joined together on the basis of mutual interest or common objectives, especially a business group that is not organized or constituted as a legal entity.
- voluntary liquidation — the process of voluntarily terminating the affairs of a business, firm, etc, by realizing its assets to discharge its liabilities or the state of a business firm, etc, having its affairs so terminated
- 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.
- what the future holds — If you wonder what the future holds, you wonder what will happen in the future.
- 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).
- 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)
- 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.