21-letter words containing e, t, i, o, l
- to be public property — to be publicly owned
- to blow sth wide open — to expose something
- to dig one's heels in — If you dig your heels in or dig in your heels, you refuse to do something such as change your opinions or plans, especially when someone is trying very hard to make you do so.
- to fall into the trap — If someone falls into the trap of doing something, they think or behave in a way which is not wise or sensible.
- to feel obliged to do — to feel obligated to do
- to fly in the face of — If an action or belief flies in the face of accepted ideas or rules, it seems to completely oppose or contradict them.
- to lay down your life — If someone lays down their life for another person, they die so that the other person can live.
- to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
- to let your hair down — If you let your hair down, you relax completely and enjoy yourself.
- to live hand to mouth — If someone lives hand to mouth or lives from hand to mouth, they have hardly enough food or money to live on.
- to play second fiddle — If you play second fiddle to someone, your position is less important than theirs in something that you are doing together.
- to rear its ugly head — If something unpleasant rears its head or rears its ugly head, it becomes visible or noticeable.
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- to rub shoulders with — If you rub shoulders with famous people, you meet them and talk to them. You can also say that you rub elbows with someone, especially in American English.
- to take the long view — If you take the long view, you consider what is likely to happen in the future over a long period, rather than thinking only about things that are going to happen soon.
- to throw in the towel — If you throw in the towel, you stop trying to do something because you realize that you cannot succeed.
- total recoverable oil — Total recoverable oil is the amount of oil which is still left in the ground in oilfields that have already been worked.
- toussaint l'ouverture — François Dominique [frahn-swa dawmee-neek] /frɑ̃ˈswa dɔmiˈnik/ (Show IPA), 1743–1803, Haitian patriot and leader of the Haitian Revolution slave rebellion.
- traffic control tower — an elevated structure for the visual observation and control of the air and ground traffic at an airport
- transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
- traveling salesperson — a representative of a business firm who travels in an assigned territory soliciting orders for a company's services.
- trichloroacetaldehyde — chloral (def 1).
- trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
- triethyl orthoformate — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 16 O 3 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
- triple superphosphate — superphosphate (def 2).
- triple-superphosphate — Also called acid phosphate. a mixture of calcium acid phosphate and calcium sulfate prepared by treating phosphate rock with sulfuric acid: used chiefly as a fertilizer.
- twelve-tone technique — a modern system of tone relationships in which the 12 tones of an octave are not centered around any one tone, but are unified by a selected order of tones for a given composition.
- twenty-two metre line — one of two lines on a rugby pitch which are twenty-two metres from the goal-line
- twist the lion's tail — a large, usually tawny-yellow cat, Panthera leo, native to Africa and southern Asia, having a tufted tail and, in the male, a large mane.
- ulster unionist party — a Northern Irish political party advocating the maintenance of union with the UK
- ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
- 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 iceland — (body, education) The Home of Fjolnir.
- until the end of time — If you say that something will happen or be true until the end of time or to the end of time, you are emphasizing that it will always happen or always be true.
- up to the elbows with — busily occupied with; deeply immersed in
- vacation bible school — a religious school conducted by some churches during the summer for students on vacation.
- ventriloquist's dummy — a puppet which is operated by a ventriloquist and made to appear to talk
- 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.
- volumetric efficiency — the ratio of fluid delivered by a piston or ram pump per stroke to the displacement volume of the piston or ram
- 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.
- warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
- weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
- well-ordering theorem — the theorem of set theory that every set can be made a well-ordered set.
- west lothian question — the apparent inconsistency that members of parliament who represent Scottish constituencies are eligible to vote at Westminster on matters that relate only to England, whereas members of parliament from English constituencies are not eligible to vote on Scottish matters
- wet collodion process — a photographic process, in common use in the mid-19th century, employing a glass photographic plate coated with iodized collodion and dipped in a silver nitrate solution immediately before use.
- wildlife photographer — someone that specializes in taking photographs of wild animals, especially in their natural habitats, and plants
- william the conqueror — ("the Conqueror") 1027–87, duke of Normandy 1035–87; king of England 1066–87 (son of Robert I, duke of Normandy).
- wilson's storm petrel — a small petrel, Oceanites oceanicus, that breeds in the Southern Hemisphere but ranges into the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans.