18-letter words containing d, r, s
- non-discriminative — constituting a particular quality, trait, or difference; characteristic; notable.
- non-understandable — capable of being understood; comprehensible.
- nondestructiveness — The quality of not being destructive.
- nonstriated muscle — smooth muscle
- nord-pas-de-calais — a region of N France, on the Straits of Dover (the Pas de Calais): coal-mining, textile, and metallurgical industries
- normally aspirated — A normally aspirated or naturally aspirated engine breathes air at atmospheric pressure.
- north bedfordshire — a city in Bedfordshire, in central England.
- northeast corridor — the long, narrow strip of land between Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., containing many adjacent urban areas.
- nueva san salvador — Santa Tecla.
- office of readings — the first of the canonical hours; matins
- old curiosity shop — a novel (1840–41) by Dickens.
- on the credit side — You say on the credit side in order to introduce one or more good things about a situation or person, usually when you have already mentioned the bad things about them.
- on the danger list — critically ill in hospital
- one's heart bleeds — used to express sympathetic grief, but often used ironically
- open pandora's box — If someone or something opens Pandora's box or opens a Pandora's box, they do something that causes a lot of problems to appear that did not exist or were not known about before.
- optical disc drive — optical disk drive
- optical disk drive — (hardware) (Or "optical disc drive", "optical storage") A generic term for any device that reads and/or writes optical media, i.e. compact discs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray discs or future media that uses light (from a small laser) to read data off a removable, rotating disk. At least one such drive is commonly installed in most personal computers to allow them to play and/or record audio and video media and load and store data such as program installers. The floppy disk has been replaced by optical media due to its vastly greater capacity, e.g. 50,000 megabytes for a dual-layer blu-ray disc compared with 1.5 megabytes for a floppy (over 30,000 times as much).
- optical soundtrack — the final soundtrack on a motion picture, which appears as a band of black and white serrations along a strip of film to the left of the composite print. Light is shined through the serrations and is converted to audible sound.
- order of australia — an order awarded to Australians for outstanding achievement or for service to Australia or to humanity at large; established in 1975
- order room service — When a customer orders room service, they ask for meals or drinks to be brought to their room.
- organic solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on division of labor and interdependence and is characteristic of complex, industrial societies.
- orthopedic surgery — corrective operation on bones or joints
- orthotungstic acid — an oxyacid acid of tungsten. Formula: H2WO4
- osteitis deformans — Paget's disease.
- osteoradionecrosis — bone tissue death induced by radiation.
- overdraft interest — interest charged on money withdrawn in excess of the credit balance of a bank or building society account
- paediatric nursing — the branch of nursing concerned with the care of children
- palm beach gardens — a city in SE Florida, near North Palm Beach.
- parathyroid glands — any of several small oval glands usually lying near or embedded in the thyroid gland.
- pass the hat round — to collect money, as for a cause
- passing-out parade — a ceremonial parade of cadets who have completed their training
- pectoral sandpiper — an American sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, the male of which, when courting, inflates its chest conspicuously.
- pedal steel guitar — an oblong, floor-mounted electrified guitar, usually having ten strings, fretted with a steel bar and producing a wailing sound that is modulated by use of a foot pedal.
- pedestrian traffic — the people coming and going on foot in a street, town, etc
- people's democracy — (in Communist ideology) a country or form of government in transition from bourgeois democracy to socialism. In this stage there is more than one class, the largest being the proletariat, led by the Communist Party, which is therefore the dominant power
- per ardua ad astra — through difficulties to the stars: the motto of the RAF
- percussion welding — a form of resistance welding in which the required pressure is provided by a hammerlike blow.
- permanent hardness — hardness of water that cannot be removed by boiling as it results mainly from the presence of calcium and magnesium chlorides and sulphates
- permanent resident — an immigrant who has been given official residential status, often prior to being granted citizenship
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- pescadores-islands — (used with a plural verb) Penghu.
- phosphatidylserine — any of a class of phospholipids occurring in biological membranes and fats
- pitch-and-run shot — chip shot.
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- 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.
- potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
- pre-filled syringe — A pre-filled syringe is a disposable syringe that is supplied already loaded with the substance to be injected.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- predation pressure — the effect of predation upon a population, resulting in the decrease in size of that population.