18-letter words containing c, i, r, u
- potassium chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
- potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
- precious moonstone — moonstone (def 1).
- predicate calculus — predicate logic
- prefect of studies — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- present continuous — a verb form consisting of an auxiliary be in the present tense followed by a present participle and used especially to indicate that a present action or event is in progress, being repeated, or of a temporary nature or to express the future.
- principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
- prison rustic work — rustication having a deeply pitted surface.
- process scheduling — multitasking
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
- product life cycle — the four stages (introduction, growth, maturity, and decline) into one of which the sales of a product fall during its market life
- production company — an organization which produces, films, plays, television or radio programmes
- production control — the planning and supervision of manufacturing activities to ensure that goods will be produced on time at the lowest possible cost.
- production manager — a supervisor of the budget, crew and other details in the production of a film or play
- productivity bonus — an extra payment made to workers for being more productive or yielding more favourable results than normal
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- protective custody — detention of a person by the police solely as protection against a possible attack or reprisal by someone.
- protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
- provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
- provascular tissue — procambium.
- provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
- pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
- pseudotuberculosis — an acute, sometimes fatal disease of rodents, birds, and other animals, including humans, caused by the bacterium Yersinia (Pasteurella) pseudotuberculosis, and characterized by the formation of nodules resembling those that result from tuberculosis.
- psychotherapeutics — psychotherapy.
- public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
- public expenditure — spending by central government, local authorities, and public corporations
- puerto rico trench — a depression in the ocean floor, N of Puerto Rico: includes deepest part of Atlantic Ocean, 28,374 feet (8648 meters).
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- puss in the corner — a parlor game for children in which one player in the middle of a room tries to occupy any of the positions along the walls that become vacant as other players dash across to exchange places at a signal.
- pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
- pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
- quadratic equation — an equation containing a single variable of degree 2. Its general form is ax 2 + bx + c = 0, where x is the variable and a, b, and c are constants (a ≠ 0).
- quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- quarterlife crisis — a crisis that may be experienced in one's twenties, involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one's life
- quick off the mark — If you are quick off the mark, you are quick to understand or respond to something. If you are slow off the mark, you are slow to understand or respond to something.
- quinacrine mustard — a nitrogen mustard derived from mepacrine and used as a stain for chromosomes
- quite the contrary — not at all, the very opposite
- radiocommunication — communication by means of radio waves
- real-time computer — a computer that can process data or information almost immediately
- reciprocating pump — A reciprocating pump is a pump which uses a backward and forward movement to move a fluid.
- recruiting officer — a person whose job is to recruit staff, esp on behalf of the military
- recruitment agency — company that places job candidates
- recursive function — a function defined in terms of the repeated application of a number of simpler functions to their own values, by specifying a base clause and a recursion formula
- red mercuric oxide — a slightly crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous compound, HgO, occurring as a coarse, orange-red powder (red mercuric oxide) or as a fine, orange-yellow powder (yellow mercuric oxide) used chiefly as a pigment in paints and as an antiseptic in pharmaceuticals.
- reduction division — the first division of meiosis in which the number of chromosomes is reduced to half the original number.
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- reference counting — (programming) A garbage collection technique where each memory cell contains a count of the number of other cells which point to it. If this count reaches zero the cell is freed and its pointers to other cells are followed to decrement their counts, and so on recursively. This technique cannot cope with circular data structures. Cells in such structures refer (indirectly) to themselves and so will never have a zero reference count. This means they would never be reclaimed, even when there are no references from outside the structure.
- reinsurance treaty — A reinsurance treaty is a contract that defines the terms of reinsurance business.