18-letter words containing a, n, y, u
- of your own making — If you say that something such as a problem you have is of your own making, you mean you have caused or created it yourself.
- open heart surgery — surgery performed on the exposed heart while a heart-lung machine pumps and oxygenates the blood and diverts it from the heart.
- open-heart surgery — surgery performed on the exposed heart while a heart-lung machine pumps and oxygenates the blood and diverts it from the heart.
- 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
- pennsylvania dutch — the descendants of 17th- and 18th-century settlers in Pennsylvania from southwest Germany and Switzerland.
- perlocutionary act — the action of affecting someone by uttering certain words
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- phytohemagglutinin — a lectin, obtained from the red kidney bean, that binds to the membranes of T cells and stimulates metabolic activity, cell division, etc.
- play cat and mouse — Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- pneumatic conveyor — a tube through which powdered or granular material, such as cement, grain, etc is transported by a flow of air
- population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
- population pyramid — a graph showing the distribution of a population by sex, age, etc.
- post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- potassium myronate — sinigrin.
- production company — an organization which produces, films, plays, television or radio programmes
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- 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
- pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
- pyramus and thisbe — (in Greek legend) two lovers of Babylon: Pyramus, wrongly supposing Thisbe to be dead, killed himself and she, encountering him in his death throes, did the same
- quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
- quantity surveying — the action or profession of a person who estimates the cost of the materials and labour necessary for a construction job
- quantum efficiency — the number of electrons released by a photocell per photon of incident radiation of a given energy
- quite the contrary — not at all, the very opposite
- radius of gyration — the distance from an axis at which the mass of a body may be assumed to be concentrated and at which the moment of inertia will be equal to the moment of inertia of the actual mass about the axis, equal to the square root of the quotient of the moment of inertia and the mass.
- ready when you are — If you say to someone 'Ready when you are', you are telling them that you are now ready to do something and that as soon as they are ready, you will do it.
- recruitment agency — company that places job candidates
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- redundancy payment — a sum of money given by an employer to an employee who has been made redundant: usually calculated on the basis of the employee's rate of pay and length of service
- reinsurance treaty — A reinsurance treaty is a contract that defines the terms of reinsurance business.
- 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.
- remembrance sunday — the second Sunday in November, which is the Sunday closest to November 11, the anniversary of the armistice of 1918 that ended World War I, on which the dead of both World Wars are commemorated
- repayment schedule — a document detailing the specific terms of a borrower's loan, such as monthly payment, interest rate, due dates etc
- reversionary bonus — a bonus added to the sum payable on death or at the maturity of a with-profits assurance policy
- revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
- room occupancy tax — Room occupancy tax is a tax that guests at a hotel have to pay in order to stay there.
- run in sb's family — If a characteristic runs in someone's family, it often occurs in members of that family, in different generations.
- running commentary — non-stop description of sth
- rural municipality — any lightly settled area in Canada lacking a local elected government and administered directly by a provincial government.
- 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
- 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.
- secondary consumer — (in the food chain) a carnivore that feeds only upon herbivores.
- secondary industry — manufacturing, services, etc.
- securities analyst — an expert who advises on investment in securities such as stocks, shares and bonds
- security agreement — business: contract
- security clearance — access to top secret information