20-letter words containing a, p, r, i
- special patrol group — a former police unit tasked with counter terrorism in the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- special relationship — the exceptionally close political, diplomatic, cultural and historical relations between the United States and the United Kingdom
- specialist registrar — a hospital doctor senior to a house officer but junior to a consultant, specializing in medicine (medical specialist registrar), surgery (surgical specialist registrar), or some subspeciality of either
- specific performance — (especially in the sale of land) literal compliance with one's contractual promises pursuant to a judicial mandate.
- spectroscopic binary — a binary star having components that are not sufficiently separated to be resolved by a telescope, known to be a binary only bythe variations in wavelength of emitted light that are detected by a spectroscope.
- spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
- spherical coordinate — Usually, spherical coordinates. any of three coordinates used to locate a point in space by the length of its radius vector and the angles this vector makes with two perpendicular polar planes.
- spiral of archimedes — a curve that is the locus of a point that moves outward with uniform speed along a vector, beginning at the origin, while the vector rotates about the origin with uniform angular velocity. Equation (in polar coordinates): r = aθ.
- spirits of hartshorn — a colorless, pungent, suffocating, aqueous solution of about 28.5 percent ammonia gas: used chiefly as a detergent, for removing stains and extracting certain vegetable coloring agents, and in the manufacture of ammonium salts.
- splice the mainbrace — to issue and partake of an extra allocation of alcoholic spirits
- spontaneous abortion — miscarriage (def 1).
- spontaneous-abortion — Also called voluntary abortion. the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.
- spotted crane's-bill — the American wild geranium, Geranium maculatum.
- spread like wildfire — If something, especially news or a rumour, spreads like wildfire, it spreads extremely quickly.
- square of opposition — a diagrammatic representation of the opposition of categorical propositions.
- st.-germain-des-pres — an area in Paris, on the Left Bank.
- state highway patrol — a state's road traffic police
- state representative — a person elected by a state to be a member of the House of Representatives
- step into the breach — If you step into the breach, you do a job or task which someone else was supposed to do or has done in the past, because they are suddenly unable to do it.
- subscription library — a commercial lending library
- supersonic transport — a commercial jet airplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound. Abbreviation: SST.
- switchboard operator — a person who operates an installation in a telephone exchange, office, hotel, etc, at which the interconnection of telephone lines is manually controlled
- teletype corporation — (company) The company which made Teletype teletypewriters. Address: Skokie, Illinois, USA.
- television programme — a programme broadcast on television
- temperature gradient — rate of change of temperature with distance.
- the (great) pyramids — the three large pyramids at Gîza, Egypt: the largest is the Pyramid of Khufu
- the hearing impaired — people whose hearing is partially defective
- the legal profession — the profession of law
- therapeutic abortion — abortion performed when a woman's pregnancy endangers her health.
- third-party software — software created by programmers or publishers independent of the manufacturer of the hardware for which it is intended.
- to bring up the rear — If a person or vehicle is bringing up the rear, they are the last person or vehicle in a moving line of them.
- to disturb the peace — If someone is accused of disturbing the peace, they are accused of behaving in a noisy and offensive way in public.
- to keep your hand in — If you do something to keep your hand in, you practise a skill or hobby occasionally in order to remain fairly good at it.
- to make up your mind — If you make up your mind or make your mind up, you decide which of a number of possible things you will have or do.
- to spread your wings — If you spread your wings, you do something new and rather difficult or move to a new place, because you feel more confident in your abilities than you used to and you want to gain wider experience.
- toxemia of pregnancy — an abnormal condition of pregnancy characterized by hypertension, fluid retention, edema, and the presence of protein in the urine.
- transformation point — a temperature at which the transformation of one microconstituent to another begins or ends during heating or cooling.
- transposition cipher — a cipher that rearranges the letters of the plain text in a different sequence.
- travel-sickness pill — a pill which is used to relieve the symptoms of travel or motion sickness, the condition of being nauseated from riding in a moving vehicle
- triphenylmethane dye — any of a great number of dyes, as gentian violet, fuchsin, and rosaniline, produced from triphenylmethane by replacement of the ring hydrogen atoms with hydroxy, amino, sulfo, or other atoms or groups.
- tropical continental — a type of warm, dry air mass originating at low latitudes over land areas
- tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
- tropospheric scatter — transmission of radio frequency signals that have been scattered from irregularities in the troposphere to locations hundreds of kilometers distant.
- tubing head pressure — The tubing head pressure is the pressure on the tubing, which is measured at the wellhead.
- united arab republic — a name given the union of Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961; after that, the official name of Egypt alone until 1971. Abbreviation: U.A.R.
- upmail tricia prolog — ftp://ftp.csd.uu.se/pub/Tricia/README. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
- upper income bracket — a grouping of the highest earning tax payers
- upper yosemite falls — a section of Yosemite Falls in central California, in the Yosemite National Park that is 436 m (1430 ft) high
- vertical envelopment — envelopment of an enemy accomplished by parachuting and landing airborne troops at the rear of the enemy's position.
- video graphics array — (hardware) (VGA) A display standard for IBM PCs, with 640 x 480 pixels in 16 colours and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is also a text mode with 720 x 400 pixels. IBM technical references define the *product name* of their original VGA display board as "Video Graphics Array", in contrast to the preceding boards, the "Color Graphics Adapter" (CGA) and "Enhanced Graphics Adapter" (EGA). See also Super Video Graphics Adapter.