21-letter words containing a, r, g, y, i
- psychological primary — one of a set of perceived colours (red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white) that can be used to characterize all other perceived colours
- psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
- psychomotor agitation — agitation (def 3).
- psychomotor-agitation — the act or process of agitating; state of being agitated: She left in great agitation.
- pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
- pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
- pure imaginary number — a complex number of the form iy where y is a real number and i = .
- pyrenean mountain dog — a large heavily built dog of an ancient breed originally used to protect sheep from wild animals: it has a long thick white coat with a dense ruff
- quality point average — grade point average.
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- real operating system — (operating system, abuse) The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
- referential integrity — (database) A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database. For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.
- ring-around-the-rosey — a children's game in which the players sing while going around in a circle and squat when the lyrics “all fall down” are sung.
- salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
- saving your reverence — a form of apology for using an obscene or taboo expression
- schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
- tape operating system — (operating system) (TOS) An IBM operating system for System 360, used in the early days around 1965 to support the IBM 360 model 30 et al. TOS was a predecessor to IBM's Disk Operating System. TOS died out really early as disks such as the 2311 and 2314 became common with the IBM 360 whereas thet had been a real luxury on the IBM 7090.
- threshold wage policy — a policy whereby wages are increased in accordance with inflation
- to be arrayed against — to be opposed to
- to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
- to rear its ugly head — If something unpleasant rears its head or rears its ugly head, it becomes visible or noticeable.
- vertically challenged — short in stature.
- washington's birthday — February 22, formerly observed as a legal holiday in most states of the U.S. in honor of the birth of George Washington.
- weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
- your mileage may vary — (jargon) (YMMV) The disclaimer American car manufacturers attached to EPA mileage ratings. A humourous way of saying that the thing under discussion will not necessarily give you the same results as the author. Often used to convey the hardware dependence of Unix freeware distributions.
- youth training scheme — (formerly, in Britain) a scheme, run by the Training Agency, to provide vocational training for unemployed 16–17-year-olds