21-letter words containing a, s, v
- ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
- 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 arizona — (body, education) The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. Today, the University is one of the top 20 research universities in the nation, with a student enrollment of more than 35,000, a faculty and staff of 12,500, and a 345-acre campus. Address: Tucson, Arizona, USA.
- university of iceland — (body, education) The Home of Fjolnir.
- vacation bible school — a religious school conducted by some churches during the summer for students on vacation.
- vasco nunez de balboa — Vasco Núñez de [bahs-kaw noo-nyeth th e] /ˈbɑs kɔ ˈnu nyɛθ ðɛ/ (Show IPA), 1475?–1517, Spanish adventurer and explorer who discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513.
- 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.
- venus's looking glass — a purple-flowered campanulaceous plant, Legousia hybrida, of Europe, W Asia, and N Africa
- 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 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.
- 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.
- water-vascular system — a system of closed, fluid-filled tubes and ducts of echinoderms used in clinging, locomotion, feeding, and respiration.
- west university place — a city in SE Texas.