21-letter words containing c, r, o, s
- preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
- precision engineering — design of complex and specialized machines
- preexisting condition — A preexisting condition is a medical condition already suffered by a proposer before the starting date of an insurance policy.
- prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- price competitiveness — pricing goods or services so that they are competitive with the prices of other companies
- processor direct slot — (hardware) (PDS) Apple Computer's name for a local bus connection. Most Macintoshes have only one PDS connector. Different Apple computers have different PDS specifications.
- professional services — (job) A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
- profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
- progressive education — any of various reformist educational philosophies and methodologies since the late 1800s, applied especially to elementary schools, that reject the rote recitation and strict discipline of traditional, single-classroom teaching, favoring instead more stimulation of the individual pupil as well as group discussion, more informality in the classroom, a broader curriculum, and use of laboratories, gymnasiums, kitchens, etc., in the school.
- projection television — a television picture display system consisting of a special receiver and an optical system that projects an enlarged picture on a screen.
- protestant work ethic — work ethic.
- 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.
- psychoneuroimmunology — the study of the effects of psychological factors on the immune system
- psychopathic disorder — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a persistent disorder or disability of mind which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned
- psychopharmacotherapy — the use of psychoactive drugs in the symptomatic treatment or control of mental disorders or psychiatric disease.
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public transportation — means of fare-paying travel
- purple-fringed orchis — either of two North American orchids (Habenaria psycodes and H. fimbriata) with purple-fringed flowers
- queer someone's pitch — to upset someone's plans
- racial discrimination — prejudice based on race
- radius of convergence — a positive number so related to a given power series that the power series converges for every number whose absolute value is less than this particular number.
- range of significance — the set of subjects for which a given predicate is intelligible
- rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
- rattle someone's cage — to upset or anger someone
- reading comprehension — a text that students use to help them improve their reading skills, by reading it and answering questions relating to the text. Sometimes used as a test or examination of reading skills. A reading comprehension can be in the student's own or another language
- recompression chamber — hyperbaric chamber.
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- reconnaissance patrol — a patrol made by soldiers in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- registration document — a document giving identification details of a motor vehicle, including its manufacturer, date of registration, engine and chassis numbers, and owner's name
- relaxation oscillator — a nonsinusoidal oscillator, the timing of which is controlled by the charge and discharge time constants of resistance and capacitance components
- resident commissioner — a representative from a dependency, as Guam or Puerto Rico, who is entitled to speak, but not to vote, in the U.S. House of Representatives.
- rocky mountain locust — a migratory locust, Melanoplus spretus, that occurs in North America, especially the Great Plains, where swarms cause great damage to crops and other vegetation.
- rocky mountain oyster — mountain oyster.
- roll with the punches — a thrusting blow, especially with the fist.
- rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
- s-k reduction machine — An abstract machine defined by Professor David Turner to evaluate combinator expressions represented as binary graphs. Named after the two basic combinators, S and K.
- saint anthony's cross — tau cross.
- sao bernardo do campo — a city in SE Brazil, SE of São Paulo.
- sao tome and principe — Democratic Republic of, a republic in W Africa, comprising the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, in the Gulf of Guinea, N of the equator: a former overseas province of Portugal; gained independence in 1975. 372 sq. mi. (964 sq. km). Capital: São Tomé.
- saponification number — the number of milligrams of potassium hydroxide required to saponify one gram of a given ester, especially a glyceride.
- satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
- saving your reverence — a form of apology for using an obscene or taboo expression
- scalar multiplication — an operation used in the definition of a vector space in which the product of a scalar and a vector is a vector, the operation is distributive over the addition of both scalars and vectors, and is associative with multiplication of scalars
- scalar triple product — the volume of the parallelepiped defined by three given vectors, u, v, and w, usually represented as u·v 1 (v×w), [ uvw ], or (uvw), where × denotes a cross product and · denotes an inner product.
- scarlet monkey flower — any of various plants belonging to the genus Mimulus, of the figwort family, as M. cardinalis (scarlet monkey flower) having spotted flowers that resemble a face.
- schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
- school of hard knocks — the experience gained from living, especially from disappointment and hard work, regarded as a means of education: The only school he ever attended was the school of hard knocks.