20-letter words containing a, n, u, l, i, s
- overenthusiastically — With excessive enthusiasm.
- paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
- pappus of alexandria — 3rd century bc, Greek mathematician, whose eight-volume Synagoge is a valuable source of information about Greek mathematics
- peaceful coexistence — competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations: peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
- peculiar institution — black slavery in the southern U.S. before the Civil War.
- pentobarbital sodium — a barbiturate drug used in medicine as a sedative and hypnotic. Formula: C11H17N2O3Na
- pentose nucleic acid — a nucleic acid containing a pentose.
- permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
- pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage) (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
- polyanthus narcissus — a Eurasian amaryllidaceous plant, Narcissus tazetta, having clusters of small yellow or white fragrant flowers
- population explosion — the rapid increase in numbers of a particular species, especially in the world's human population since the end of World War II, attributed to an accelerating birthrate, a decrease in infant mortality, and an increase in life expectancy.
- population inversion — a condition of matter in which more electrons are in a high energy state than in a lower energy state, as is required for the operation of a laser.
- potassium binoxalate — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, poisonous solid, KHC 2 O 4 , that is usually hydrated: used chiefly for removing ink stains, cleaning metal and wood, and in photography.
- premenstrual tension — Premenstrual tension is the same as premenstrual syndrome. The abbreviation PMT is often used.
- prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
- property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
- public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
- pyrenees-atlantiques — a department in SW France. 2978 sq. mi. (7710 sq. km). Capital: Pau.
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
- qualitative analysis — the analysis of a substance in order to ascertain the nature of its chemical constituents.
- quasi-constitutional — of or relating to the constitution of a state, organization, etc.
- rachel louise carson — Christopher ("Kit") 1809–68, U.S. frontiersman and scout.
- receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
- reciprocal insurance — insurance in which members of a reciprocal exchange, acting through an attorney-in-fact, insure themselves and each other.
- refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
- rough-winged swallow — either of two New World swallows of the genus Stelgidopteryx, having outer primary feathers with small barblike hooks on the margins.
- saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
- settle accounts with — to pay or receive a balance due
- shifting cultivation — a land-use system, esp in tropical Africa, in which a tract of land is cultivated until its fertility diminishes, when it is abandoned until this is restored naturally
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- soft gelatin capsule — A soft gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of liquid or powder, and which dissolves more quickly than a hard gelatin capsule.
- sound-and-light show — a nighttime spectacle or performance, at which a building, historic site, etc., is illuminated and the historic significance is imparted to spectators by means of narration, sound effects, and music.
- south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
- south atlantic ocean — the part of the Atlantic Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
- south orkney islands — an uninhabited group of islands in the S Atlantic, southeast of Cape Horn: formerly a dependency of the Falkland Islands; part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962 (claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty). Area: 621 sq km (240 sq miles)
- southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
- subscription library — a commercial lending library
- suitland-silver hill — a city in central Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
- surveillance society — a society where surveillance technology is widely used to monitor people's everyday activities
- systemic circulation — the circulatory system in general.
- terrestrial guidance — a method of missile or rocket guidance in which the flight path is controlled by reference to the strength and direction of the earth's gravitational or magnetic field
- to burst into flames — If something bursts into flames or bursts into flame, it suddenly starts burning strongly.
- troilus and cressida — a satiric comedy (1598–1602?) by Shakespeare.
- tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
- twelve-string guitar — an acoustic guitar having twelve strings instead of six, with each pair tuned an octave apart, and more difficult to play than the standard guitar.
- ultimate constituent — an element of a construction that cannot be further divided into grammatical constituents: the morphemes of an utterance are usually considered to be its ultimate constituents.
- uncharacteristically — Also, characteristical. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.
- universal quantifier — a quantifier indicating that the sentential function within its scope is true for all values of any variable included in the quantifier.
- universal serial bus — (hardware, standard) (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. USB is intended to replace existing serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard, and monitor connectors and be used with keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, and possibly some low-speed scanners and removable hard drives. For faster devices existing IDE, SCSI, or emerging FC-AL or FireWire interfaces can be used. USB works at 12 Mbps with specific consideration for low cost peripherals. It supports up to 127 devices and both isochronous and asynchronous data transfers. Cables can be up to five metres long and it includes built-in power distribution for low power devices. It supports daisy chaining through a tiered star multidrop topology. A USB cable has a rectangular "Type A" plug at the computer end and a square "Type B" plug at the peripheral end. Before March 1996 Intel started to integrate the necessary logic into PC chip sets and encourage other manufacturers to do likewise. It was widely available by 1997. Later versions of Windows 95 included support for it. It was standard on Macintosh computers in 1999. The USB 2.0 specification was released in 2000 to allow USB to compete with Firewire etc. USB 2.0 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 but works at 480 Mbps.