18-letter words containing a, n, u, l, p, r

nuclear capability — If a country has nuclear capability, it is able to produce nuclear power and usually nuclear weapons.
numerical aperture — a measure of the resolving power of a microscope, equal to the index of refraction of the medium in which the object is placed multiplied by the sine of the angle made with the axis by the most oblique ray entering the instrument, the resolving power increasing as the product increases. Abbreviation: N.A.
occupational group — An occupational group is a category used by insurance companies to classify jobs according to how hazardous they are.
optical soundtrack — the final soundtrack on a motion picture, which appears as a band of black and white serrations along a strip of film to the left of the composite print. Light is shined through the serrations and is converted to audible sound.
pacinian corpuscle — (sometimes lowercase) a microscopic, onionlike body consisting of layers of connective tissue wrapped around a nerve ending, located in the deep layers of skin, tendons, etc., and functioning as a sensory receptor of pressure and vibration.
parallel computing — parallel processing
parallel evolution — the independent development of closely corresponding adaptive features in two or more groups of organisms that occupy different but equivalent habitats, as marsupial mammals in Australia and placental mammals on other continents.
parallel reduction — A form of applicative order reduction in which all redexes in an expression are reduced simultaneously. Variants include parallel outermost reduction and lenient reduction. See normal order reduction.
paraurethral gland — any of a group of vestigial glands located in the posterior wall of the urethra in women.
partial evaluation — (compiler, algorithm) (Or "specialisation") An optimisation technique where the compiler evaluates some subexpressions at compile-time. For example, Partial evaluation might change the termination properties of the program if, for example, the expression (x * 0) was reduced to 0 it would terminate even if x (and thus x * 0) did not. It may be necessary to reorder an expression to partially evaluate it, e.g. f x y = (x + y) + 1 g z = f 3 z If we rewrite f: f x y = (x + 1) + y then the expression x+1 becomes a constant for the function g and we can say g z = f 3 z = (3 + 1) + z = 4 + z Partial evaluation of built-in functions applied to constant arguments is known as constant folding. See also full laziness.
payment by results — a system of wage payment whereby all or part of the wage varies systematically according to the level of work performance of an employee
perceptual defence — the process by which it is thought that certain stimuli are either not perceived or are distorted due to their offensive, unpleasant, or threatening nature
perceptual mapping — the use of a graph or map in the development of a new product, in which the proximity of consumers' images of the new product to those of an ideal product provide an indication of the new product's likely success
percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
perlocutionary act — the action of affecting someone by uttering certain words
perpetual calendar — a calendar devised to be used for many years, as in determining the day of the week on which a given date falls.
personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
personal insurance — insurance on personal risk, such as car insurance, health insurance or loss of earnings insurance
pleasure principle — an automatic mental drive or instinct seeking to avoid pain and to obtain pleasure.
plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
plumber's merchant — a shop or business that sells things needed for the job of installing and repairing pipes, fixtures, etc, for water, drainage, and gas
population control — a policy of attempting to limit the growth in numbers of a population, esp in poor or densely populated parts of the world, by programmes of contraception or sterilization
population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
population pyramid — a graph showing the distribution of a population by sex, age, etc.
portable equipment — Portable equipment is electrical equipment that can easily be moved from one place to another while in operation or while connected to the supply.
portal circulation — blood flow in a portal system.
post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
preantepenultimate — third from the end.
presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
presumption of law — a presumption based upon a policy of law or a general rule and not upon the facts or evidence in an individual case.
principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
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
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.
repayment schedule — a document detailing the specific terms of a borrower's loan, such as monthly payment, interest rate, due dates etc
resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
rural municipality — any lightly settled area in Canada lacking a local elected government and administered directly by a provincial government.
sampling frequency — sample rate
scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
temporal summation — the act or process of summing.

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