18-letter words containing a, p, r
- transient response — A transient response of a circuit is a temporary change in the way that it behaves due to an external excitation, that will disappear with time.
- transporter bridge — a bridge for carrying passengers and vehicles by means of a platform suspended from a trolley.
- transverse process — a process that projects from the sides of a vertebra.
- transylvanian alps — a mountain range in S Romania; a SW extension of the Carpathian Mountains. Highest peak: Mount Negoiu, 2548 m (8360 ft)
- triphosphoric acid — the hypothetical acid H 5 P 3 O 10 , known chiefly by its salts.
- truck center plate — one of a pair of plates that fit together and support the body of a car on a truck, while allowing the truck to rotate with respect to the body. One plate (body center plate) is attached to the underside of the car body and the other (truck center plate) is part of the car truck.
- under-compensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- under-depreciation — decrease in value due to wear and tear, decay, decline in price, etc.
- unfair competition — acts done by a seller to confuse or deceive the public with intent to acquire a larger portion of the market, as by cutting prices below cost, misleading advertising, selling a spurious product under a false identity, etc.
- unisys corporation — (company) The company formed in 1984-5 when Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry Corporation. This was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined. Unisys is one of the largest providers of information services, technology, and software in the world. They employ about 49,000 people and do business in some 100 countries. In 1994 about 80 percent of revenue was derived from commercial information systems and services, with the remainder coming from electronic systems and services for the defense market. The defense business was sold to Loral in early 1995. Slightly more than half of Unisys's revenue is from business in the United States. They specialise in providing business-critical solutions, based on open information networks, for organisations that operate in transaction-intensive environments. These organisations include financial services companies, airlines, telecommunications companies, government agencies, and other commercial enterprises. In August 1994, quarterly sales were $1799M and profits $50M.
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- upper klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- upper middle class — wealthy, highly-educated people
- upper palaeolithic — the latest of the three periods of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 40 000 bc and ending, in Europe, about 12 000 bc: characterized by the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens
- upper partial tone — overtone (def 1).
- urban contemporary — popular dance music incorporating elements of rap, rhythm-and-blues, funk, and soul.
- vectorcardiography — a method of determining the direction and magnitude of the electrical forces of the heart.
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- vermiform appendix — a narrow, blind tube protruding from the cecum, having no known useful function, in humans being 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 cm) long and situated in the lower right-hand part of the abdomen.
- videotape recorder — a device for recording television programs on magnetic tape for delayed transmission or for storage.
- visitor's passport — (formerly, in Britain) a passport, valid for one year and for certain countries only, that could be purchased from post offices
- vulcan nerve pinch — (jargon) (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is
- ! Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12. Compare quadruple bucky. - warehouse capacity — the amount of storage space in a warehouse
- weberian apparatus — (in certain fishes) a chain of small bones and ligaments connecting the inner ear with the air bladder.
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.
- whispering gallery — a space or gallery beneath a dome or broad arch in which low sounds produced at any of certain points are clearly audible at certain other distant points.
- wild passionflower — the maypop, Passiflora incarnata.
- wildlife programme — (esp on television) a documentary whose subject is wild animals in their natural habitat or undomesticated fauna and flora generally
- wilson's phalarope — a phalarope, Phalaropus tricolor, that breeds in the prairie regions of North America and winters in Argentina and Chile.
- withdrawal symptom — effects of stopping a drug
- women at point sur — a narrative poem (1927) by Robinson Jeffers.
- work-study program — a program enabling high-school or college students to combine academic work with actual job experience.
- world championship — an international competition in a particular sport or activity for people all around the world
- wpa pre-shared key — Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key
- x-ray spectrometer — a spectrometer using x-rays to activate the inner electrons of an atom in order to separate and identify the chemical constituents of a substance and their concentrations.
- x-ray spectrometry — the use of an x-ray spectrometer.
- zion national park — a park in SW Utah. 148 sq. mi. (383 sq. km).