18-letter words containing a, l, t, i
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- psychopathological — the science or study of mental disorders.
- public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
- public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
- publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- quarry-tiled floor — a floor covered with square or diamond-shaped unglazed floor tiles
- quarterlife crisis — a crisis that may be experienced in one's twenties, involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one's life
- quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
- quasi-metaphysical — pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics.
- rabbit-foot clover — a plant, Trifolium arvense, having trifoliate leaves with narrow leaflets and fuzzy, cylindrical, grayish-pink flower heads.
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
- racially motivated — motivated by (the hate or prejudice of) someone's race
- ragtag and bobtail — the riffraff; rabble: The ragtag and bobtail of every nation poured into the frontier in search of gold.
- rail rapid transit — a system of rail transit within an urban area that has exclusive right of way either below, above, or on the ground and so is capable of relatively high operating speed. Abbreviation: RRT.
- range of stability — the angle to the perpendicular through which a vessel may be heeled without losing the ability to right itself.
- rational operation — any of the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
- real-estate office — the place where a real-estate agent works
- real-time computer — a computer that can process data or information almost immediately
- 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.
- refrigerated lorry — a lorry which is chilled in the back as for storing food
- regional enteritis — Crohn's disease.
- registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
- regular tertiaries — of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- relational algebra — (database, theory) A family of algebra with a well-founded semantics used for modelling the data stored in relational databases, and defining queries on it. The main operations of the relational algebra are the set operations (such as union, intersection, and cartesian product), selection (keeping only some lines of a table) and the projection (keeping only some columns). The relational data model describes how the data is structured.
- relative frequency — the ratio of the number of times an event occurs to the number of occasions on which it might occur in the same period.
- relative major key — a major key that has the same key signature as a minor key, but a different tonic
- relative minor key — a minor key that has the same key signature as a major key, but a different tonic
- replacement engine — an engine used to replace or substitute an older or broken engine (in a vehicle, etc)
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- residential school — (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- resistance plasmid — any of a group of bacterial plasmids carrying genetic information that provide resistance to antibiotic drugs: some resistance plasmids are able to transfer themselves, and hence resistance, during conjugation
- resistance welding — welding utilizing pressure and heat that is generated in the pieces to be welded by resistance to an electric current.
- restraining circle — any of three circles on the floor of a basketball court used for jump balls: other players must remain outside the circle during a jump ball
- restrictive clause — a relative clause that identifies the antecedent and that is usually not set off by commas in English. In The year that just ended was bad for crops, the clause that just ended is a restrictive clause.
- resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
- retail price index — The retail price index is a list of the prices of typical goods which shows how much the cost of living changes from one month to the next.
- revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
- rhode island white — one of a dual-purpose American breed of chickens having white feathers and a rose comb.
- right-to-work laws — a state law making it illegal to refuse employment to a person for the sole reason that he or she is not a union member.
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- rotary clothesline — an apparatus of radiating spokes that support lines on which clothes are hung to dry
- rotational latency — (storage, hardware) The time for the start of the required sector on a disk to appear underneath the read/write head. The worst case is where it has just passed the head when the request is received. For a disk drive with N heads per surface, rotating at R revolutions per minute, the average rotational latency will be L = 30/NR seconds. Rotational latency is one component of access time.
- rotational molding — a method for molding hollow plastic objects by placing finely divided particles in a hollow mold that is rotated about two axes, exposing it to heat and then to cold.
- running martingale — martingale (def 2).
- rural municipality — any lightly settled area in Canada lacking a local elected government and administered directly by a provincial government.