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20-letter words containing e, n, r, o, u

  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • perpendicular gothic — the style of Gothic architecture in England during the 14th and 15th centuries, characterized by tracery having vertical lines, a four-centred arch, and fan vaulting
  • person of no account — (University of California at Santa Cruz) Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.
  • phosphorus pentoxide — a white, deliquescent, crystalline powder, P 2 O 5 , that, depending upon the amount of water it absorbs, forms orthophosphoric acid, metaphosphoric acid, or pyrophosphoric acid, produced by the burning of phosphorus in dry air: used in the preparation of phosphoric acids, as a drying and dehydrating agent, and in organic synthesis.
  • population inversion — a condition of matter in which more electrons are in a high energy state than in a lower energy state, as is required for the operation of a laser.
  • population parameter — a quantity or statistical measure that, for a given population, is fixed and that is used as the value of a variable in some general distribution or frequency function to make it descriptive of that population: The mean and variance of a population are population parameters.
  • porcupine provisions — provisions, such as poison pills or staggered directorships, made in the bylaws of a company to deter takeover bids
  • postgraduate student — a student who has obtained a degree from a university, etc, and is pursuing studies for a more advanced qualification
  • pound cost averaging — a method of accumulating capital by investing a fixed sum in a particular security at regular intervals, in order to achieve an average purchase price below the arithmetic average of the market prices on the purchase dates
  • pour out one's heart — Anatomy. a hollow, pumplike organ of blood circulation, composed mainly of rhythmically contractile smooth muscle, located in the chest between the lungs and slightly to the left and consisting of four chambers: a right atrium that receives blood returning from the body via the superior and inferior vena cavae, a right ventricle that pumps the blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation, a left atrium that receives the oxygenated blood via the pulmonary veins and passes it through the mitral valve, and a left ventricle that pumps the oxygenated blood, via the aorta, throughout the body.
  • precision instrument — finely-tuned device
  • premenstrual tension — Premenstrual tension is the same as premenstrual syndrome. The abbreviation PMT is often used.
  • prime number theorem — the theorem that the number of prime numbers less than or equal to a given number is approximately equal to the given number divided by its natural logarithm.
  • prince rupert's drop — a glass bead in the shape of a teardrop, a by-product of the glass-making process, formed by molten glass falling into water. The body of the drop can withstand great force, for example a hammer blow, but the whole will explode if the tail is nipped or the surface scored
  • prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
  • princeton university — (body, education)   Chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was British North America's fourth college. First located in Elizabeth, then in Newark, the College moved to Princeton in 1756. The College was housed in Nassau Hall, newly built on land donated by Nathaniel and Rebeckah FitzRandolph. Nassau Hall contained the entire College for nearly half a century. The College was officially renamed Princeton University in 1896; five years later in 1900 the Graduate School was established. Fully coeducational since 1969, Princeton now enrolls approximately 6,400 students (4,535 undergraduates and 1,866 graduate students). The ratio of full-time students to faculty members (in full-time equivalents) is eight to one. Today Princeton's main campus in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township consists of more than 5.5 million square feet of space in 160 buildings on 600 acres. The University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro consists of one million square feet of space in four complexes on 340 acres. As Mercer County's largest private employer and one of the largest in the Mercer/Middlesex/Somerset County region, with approximately 4,830 permanent employees - including more than 1,000 faculty members - the University plays a major role in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the region.
  • procedural agreement — regulations agreed between the parties to collective bargaining, defining the bargaining units, bargaining scope, procedures for collective bargaining, and the facilities to be provided to trade union representatives
  • production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
  • programming language — a high-level language used to write computer programs, as COBOL or BASIC, or, sometimes, an assembly language.
  • prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
  • proof of the pudding — the true value or quality of something, as seen when it is experienced, tried, or put to use: The proof of the pudding for a business is what customers say about it.
  • property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
  • proportional counter — a radiation counter in which the strength of each electric pulse generated per count is proportional to the energy of the particle or photon producing the pulse, alpha particles producing a different electric pulse from beta rays.
  • prosecuting attorney — the public officer in a county, district, or other jurisdiction charged with carrying on the prosecution in criminal proceedings.
  • pseudoparenchymatous — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
  • pull (one's) rank on — to take advantage of one's military rank in enforcing commands or one's high position or seniority in making demands on (a subordinate)
  • put the hard word on — to ask or demand something from
  • pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
  • quadrantal corrector — either of two soft-iron spheres attached to each side of a binnacle, intended to correct the compass deviation (quadrantal deviation) resulting from magnetism from ferrous metal in a ship.
  • quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
  • quantum field theory — any theory in which fields are treated by the methods of quantum mechanics; each field can then be regarded as consisting of particles of a particular kind, which may be created and annihilated.
  • quarantine anchorage — an anchorage for ships awaiting a pratique.
  • queen of the prairie — a tall plant, Filipendula rubra, of the rose family, having branching clusters of pink flowers, growing in meadows and prairies.
  • queensland arrowroot — a South American and West Indian herb, Canna edulis, having large sheathing leaves, red flowers, and edible rhizomes.
  • quick on the trigger — quick to fire a gun
  • rachel louise carson — Christopher ("Kit") 1809–68, U.S. frontiersman and scout.
  • raynaud's phenomenon — a secondary circulatory disorder, often associated with a primary vascular disease, characterized by changes of blood flow resulting in white, bluish, or red hands and feet
  • receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
  • reciprocal insurance — insurance in which members of a reciprocal exchange, acting through an attorney-in-fact, insure themselves and each other.
  • reconcile an account — If you reconcile an account, you compare the items in a bank statement, credit card statement, or vendor statement with the entries on your books and make sure that the statement and books match.
  • recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
  • recursive subroutine — a subroutine that can call itself as part of its execution
  • refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
  • relative conjunction — a conjunction that introduces a relative clause
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • réseaux ip européens — (RIPE) A collaboration between European networks which use the TCP/IP protocol suite to provide Internet services.
  • respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • return from the dead — (jargon)   To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of no account.
  • return of the native — a novel (1878) by Thomas Hardy.
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