20-letter words containing a, s, r
- to have it in for sb — If someone has it in for you, they do not like you and they want to make life difficult for you.
- to overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
- to reach new heights — to become higher than ever before
- to scrape the barrel — If you say that someone is scraping the barrel, or scraping the bottom of the barrel, you disapprove of the fact that they are using or doing something of extremely poor quality.
- 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.
- to stand your ground — If you stand your ground or hold your ground, you continue to support a particular argument or to have a particular opinion when other people are opposing you or trying to make you change your mind.
- to stick in the craw — to be unacceptable or displeasing to someone
- to take years off sb — if you say that something such as an experience or a way of dressing has taken years off someone, you mean that it has made them look or feel much younger
- to waste your breath — If someone says you are wasting your breath, they mean that the person you are talking to will not take any notice and so there is no point saying anything to them.
- to wear the trousers — If one person in a couple, especially the woman, wears the pants, or in British English wears the trousers, they are the one who makes all the decisions.
- to weather the storm — If someone weathers the storm, they succeed in reaching the end of a very difficult period without much harm or damage.
- to work your way swh — If you work your way somewhere, you move or progress there slowly, and with a lot of effort or work.
- tobacco mosaic virus — a retrovirus causing mosaic disease in members of the nightshade family. Abbreviation: TMV.
- toothbrush moustache — a short narrow moustache, resembling the filaments of a toothbrush
- townsend's solitaire — a brownish, slender-billed songbird, Myadestes townsendi, of western North America.
- track-train dynamics — the interaction between the track and a moving train.
- tradesman's entrance — the entrance to a large house used by tradesmen to deliver goods and services; usually at the side or rear of the house
- transcendental logic — (in Kantian epistemology) the study of the mind with reference to its perceptions of external objects and to the objective truth of such perceptions.
- transfer of training — transfer (def 19).
- transformation point — a temperature at which the transformation of one microconstituent to another begins or ends during heating or cooling.
- transformation range — the temperature range within which austenite forms when a ferrous metal is heated, or within which it disappears when the metal is cooled.
- transmission density — a measure of the extent to which a substance transmits light or other electromagnetic radiation, equal to the logarithm to base ten of the reciprocal of the transmittance
- transposed conjugate — adjoint (def 2).
- 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
- treasury certificate — an obligation of the U.S. government represented by certificates in denominations ranging from $1000 to $1,000,000, maturing in one year or less with interest periodically payable by the redemption of coupons.
- treaty of versailles — the treaty of 1919 imposed upon Germany by the Allies (except for the US and the Soviet Union): the most important of the five peace treaties that concluded World War I
- troilus and cressida — a satiric comedy (1598–1602?) by Shakespeare.
- 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.
- trumpet call for sth — a signal for something
- trustee savings bank — a British financial institution which offered savings facilities for small investors and was managed by unpaid trustees. Depositors had no voting rights and no say in financial or managerial matters. The bank is now a public limited company with the same rights and services as other banks and only retains the title in the abbreviated form TSB.
- tubing head pressure — The tubing head pressure is the pressure on the tubing, which is measured at the wellhead.
- turn an honest penny — to earn money fairly and honestly
- twelve-string guitar — an acoustic guitar having twelve strings instead of six, with each pair tuned an octave apart, and more difficult to play than the standard guitar.
- twisted stomach worm — stomach worm.
- uncertificated share — a share of a mutual fund credited to the account of a shareholder without the physical issuance of a certificate evidencing ownership.
- uncharacteristically — Also, characteristical. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.
- unified screw thread — a screw thread system introduced for defence equipment (1939–44), in which the thread form and pitch were a compromise between British Standard Whitworth and American Standard Sellers: adopted by the International Standards Organization
- united arab emirates — group of Arabian states
- universal quantifier — a quantifier indicating that the sentential function within its scope is true for all values of any variable included in the quantifier.
- universal serial bus — (hardware, standard) (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. USB is intended to replace existing serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard, and monitor connectors and be used with keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, and possibly some low-speed scanners and removable hard drives. For faster devices existing IDE, SCSI, or emerging FC-AL or FireWire interfaces can be used. USB works at 12 Mbps with specific consideration for low cost peripherals. It supports up to 127 devices and both isochronous and asynchronous data transfers. Cables can be up to five metres long and it includes built-in power distribution for low power devices. It supports daisy chaining through a tiered star multidrop topology. A USB cable has a rectangular "Type A" plug at the computer end and a square "Type B" plug at the peripheral end. Before March 1996 Intel started to integrate the necessary logic into PC chip sets and encourage other manufacturers to do likewise. It was widely available by 1997. Later versions of Windows 95 included support for it. It was standard on Macintosh computers in 1999. The USB 2.0 specification was released in 2000 to allow USB to compete with Firewire etc. USB 2.0 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 but works at 480 Mbps.
- university education — a course of study undertaken and completed at a university
- university of durham — (body, education) A busy research and teaching community in the historic cathedral city of Durham, UK (population 61000). Its work covers key branches of science and technology and traditional areas of scholarship. Durham graduates are in great demand among employers and the University helps to attract investment into the region. It provides training, short courses, and expertise for industry. Through its cultural events, conferences, tourist business and as a major employer, the University contributes in a wide social and economic sense to the community. Founded in 1832, the University developed in Durham and Newcastle until 1963 when the independent University of Newcastle upon Tyne came into being. Durham is a collegiate body, with 14 Colleges or Societies which are a social and domestic focus for students. In 1992, the Universities of Durham and Teesside launched University College, Stockton-on-Tees, which has 190 students in the first year.
- university of hawaii — (body, education) A University spread over 10 campuses on 4 islands throughout the state. See also Aloha, Aloha Net.
- unsaddling enclosure — the area at a racecourse where horses are unsaddled after a race and often where awards are given to owners, trainers, and jockeys
- upper yosemite falls — a section of Yosemite Falls in central California, in the Yosemite National Park that is 436 m (1430 ft) high
- upset the apple cart — to disrupt a procedure, spoil someone's plans, etc.
- van der waals forces — weak electrostatic forces between atoms and molecules caused by transient distortions in the distribution of electrons in the interacting atoms or molecules
- vertical divestiture — the disposal of some or all the subsidiaries that make up a company's vertical combination through voluntary sale or legal compulsion.