21-letter words containing a, r, l
- to be hard luck on sb — to be unfortunate or unlucky for someone
- to fall into the trap — If someone falls into the trap of doing something, they think or behave in a way which is not wise or sensible.
- to kill a mockingbird — a novel (1960) by Harper Lee.
- to lay down your life — If someone lays down their life for another person, they die so that the other person can live.
- to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
- to let your hair down — If you let your hair down, you relax completely and enjoy yourself.
- to look the other way — If you say that someone looks the other way, you are critical of them because they pay no attention to something unpleasant that is happening, when they should be dealing with it properly.
- to play the race card — if someone plays the race card they bring up the issue of race in a discussion, perhaps for sympathy or to seek popularity by appealing to racist sentiment
- to rear its ugly head — If something unpleasant rears its head or rears its ugly head, it becomes visible or noticeable.
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- to sow your wild oats — If a young person sows their wild oats, they behave in a rather uncontrolled way, especially by having a lot of sexual relationships.
- topgallant forecastle — a partial weather deck on top of a forecastle superstructure; forecastle deck.
- topological invariant — a property of a topological space that is a property of every space related to the given space by a homeomorphism.
- total recoverable gas — Total recoverable gas is the amount of gas which is still left in the ground in gas fields that have already been worked.
- total recoverable oil — Total recoverable oil is the amount of oil which is still left in the ground in oilfields that have already been worked.
- toussaint l'ouverture — François Dominique [frahn-swa dawmee-neek] /frɑ̃ˈswa dɔmiˈnik/ (Show IPA), 1743–1803, Haitian patriot and leader of the Haitian Revolution slave rebellion.
- traffic control tower — an elevated structure for the visual observation and control of the air and ground traffic at an airport
- trans-alaska pipeline — a pipeline system opened in 1977 that transports oil 800 miles (1300 km) across Alaska, from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope S to Valdez harbor.
- transactinide element — any element having an atomic number higher than 103, the last of the actinide series. These superheavy, radioactive elements are extremely short-lived, and can only be created in the laboratory.
- transcendental number — a number that is not a root of any algebraic equation having integral coefficients, as π or e .
- transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
- traveling salesperson — a representative of a business firm who travels in an assigned territory soliciting orders for a company's services.
- triangulation station — a point used in triangulation as a basis for making maps. Triangulation stations are marked in a number of ways, such as by a tapering stone pillar on a hilltop
- trichloroacetaldehyde — chloral (def 1).
- trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
- triethyl orthoformate — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 16 O 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
- triple superphosphate — superphosphate (def 2).
- triple-superphosphate — Also called acid phosphate. a mixture of calcium acid phosphate and calcium sulfate prepared by treating phosphate rock with sulfuric acid: used chiefly as a fertilizer.
- tubercular meningitis — an infection of the membranes of the central nervous system caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis; features can include fever, headache, and coma
- ulster unionist party — a Northern Irish political party advocating the maintenance of union with the UK
- ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
- uncertainty principle — the principle of quantum mechanics, formulated by Heisenberg, that the accurate measurement of one of two related, observable quantities, as position and momentum or energy and time, produces uncertainties in the measurement of the other, such that the product of the uncertainties of both quantities is equal to or greater than h/ 2 π, where h equals Planck's constant.
- undesirable discharge — a discharge under other than honorable conditions of a person from military service by administrative action.
- universal affirmative — a proposition of the form “All S is P.” Symbol: A, a.
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- university of iceland — (body, education) The Home of Fjolnir.
- up close and personal — face to face, intimately
- venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
- verbatim et literatim — word for word and letter for letter; in exactly the same words.
- vertically challenged — short in stature.
- virginia (rail) fence — a zigzag fence made of rails laid across one another at the ends
- virtual device driver — (operating system) (VxD) A device driver under Windows 3.x/Windows 95 running as part of the kernel and thus having access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes as well as raw access to the hardware. VxD's usually have the filename extension .386 under Windows 3.x and .vxd under Windows 95. VxD's written for Windows 3.x can be used under Windows 95 but not vice versa.
- virtual memory system — (operating system) (VMS) DEC's proprietary operating system originally produced for its VAX minicomputer. VMS V1 was released in August 1978. VMS was renamed "OpenVMS" around version 5.5. The first version of VMS on DEC Alpha was known as OpenVMS for AXP V1.0, and the correct way to refer to the operating system now is OpenVMS for VAX or OpenVMS for Alpha. The renaming also signified the fact that the X/Open consortium had certified OpenVMS as having a high support for POSIX standards. VMS is one of the most secure operating systems on the market (making it popular in financial institutions). It currently (October 1997) has the best clustering capability (both number and distance) and is very scalable with binaries portable from small desktop workstations up to huge mainframes. Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favourite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious.
- vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.
- voice-stress analyzer — a machine purported to detect stress in a human voice and to ascertain a person's truthfulness.
- voluntary arrangement — a procedure enabling an insolvent company to come to an arrangement with its creditors and resolve its financial problems, often in compliance with a court order
- voluntary association — a group of individuals joined together on the basis of mutual interest or common objectives, especially a business group that is not organized or constituted as a legal entity.
- voluntary liquidation — the process of voluntarily terminating the affairs of a business, firm, etc, by realizing its assets to discharge its liabilities or the state of a business firm, etc, having its affairs so terminated
- volunteers of america — a religious reform and relief organization, similar to the Salvation Army, founded in New York City in 1896 by Ballington Booth, son of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Abbreviation: VOA.
- warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.