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

  • 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 figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
  • 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.
  • regular hexahedron — a solid cube with six square faces
  • 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.
  • repayment schedule — a document detailing the specific terms of a borrower's loan, such as monthly payment, interest rate, due dates etc
  • residual magnetism — remanence.
  • resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
  • revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
  • rule of engagement — a directive issued by a military authority controlling the use and degree of force, especially specifying circumstances and limitations for engaging in combat.
  • running martingale — martingale (def 2).
  • russian revolution — Also called February Revolution. the uprising in Russia in March, 1917 (February Old Style), in which the Czarist government collapsed and a provisional government was established.
  • safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
  • sampling frequency — sample rate
  • saturated solution — A saturated solution is a solution in which there is so much solute that if there was any more, it would not dissolve.
  • sault sainte marie — the rapids of the St. Marys River, between NE Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
  • schwarz inequality — Also called Cauchy's inequality. the theorem that the inner product of two vectors is less than or equal to the product of the magnitudes of the vectors.
  • scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
  • securities analyst — an expert who advises on investment in securities such as stocks, shares and bonds
  • security clearance — access to top secret information
  • self-instructional — pertaining to or constituting learning materials and conditions arranged so that students can proceed to learn on their own with little or no supervision.
  • self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
  • self-raising flour — flour with baking powder
  • self-understanding — mental process of a person who comprehends; comprehension; personal interpretation: My understanding of the word does not agree with yours.
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