18-letter words containing g, s, l
- regular expression — 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
- regular tertiaries — of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.
- reporters' gallery — an area in parliament reserved for journalists and reporters
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- resistance welding — welding utilizing pressure and heat that is generated in the pieces to be welded by resistance to an electric current.
- restraining circle — any of three circles on the floor of a basketball court used for jump balls: other players must remain outside the circle during a jump ball
- reverse angle shot — Movies. reverse shot.
- reverse psychology — (in nontechnical use) a method of getting another person to do what one wants by pretending not to want it or to want something else or something more.
- right-to-work laws — a state law making it illegal to refuse employment to a person for the sole reason that he or she is not a union member.
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
- sampling equipment — Sampling equipment is equipment which is used to remove small amounts of something for analysis and monitoring.
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- sampling statistic — any function of observed data, esp one used to estimate the corresponding parameter of the underlying distribution, such as the sample mean, sample variance, etc
- schleswig-holstein — two contiguous duchies of Denmark that were a center of international tension in the 19th century: Prussia annexed Schleswig 1864 and Holstein 1866.
- school of motoring — a centre where people pay for lessons to learn to drive
- school-leaving age — the minimum age that children are legally allowed to leave school - in Britain and the United States, this is 16
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
- seagate technology — (company) A major manufacturer of hard disk drives, founded in 1979 as "Shugart Technology" by Alan F. Shugart and Finis Conner. That name is on the original patents for the 5.25" hard disk drive. They changed the name to Seagate Technology soon after to avoid confusion, and also to avoid friction with Xerox, which had since purchased Alan's earlier company, Shugart Associates. Address: 920 Disc Drive, Scotts Valley, CA 95066, USA. Fax: +1 (408) 438 3320.
- secondary diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- secretarial agency — a recruiting business which deals with jobs for secretaries
- segmental phonemes — phonemes consisting of sound segments; hence, the vowel, consonant, and semivowel sounds of a language
- selective breeding — the raising of animals with particular genetic traits through careful choice of parents
- self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- self-deprecatingly — in a self-deprecating manner
- self-disparagement — the act of disparaging.
- self-extinguishing — to put out (a fire, light, etc.); put out the flame of (something burning or lighted): to extinguish a candle.
- self-glorification — a glorified or more splendid form of something.
- self-gratification — the act of pleasing or satisfying oneself, especially the gratifying of one's own impulses, needs, or desires.
- self-incriminating — serving to incriminate oneself or to expose oneself to prosecution: self-incriminating testimony.
- self-interrogation — the act of interrogating; questioning.
- self-raising flour — flour with baking powder
- self-tapping screw — a screw designed to tap its corresponding female thread as it is driven.
- self-understanding — mental process of a person who comprehends; comprehension; personal interpretation: My understanding of the word does not agree with yours.
- senior high school — a school attended after junior high school and usually consisting of grades 10 through 12.
- seven-league boots — mythical boots that allowed the wearer to travel seven leagues (a former unit of measurement), ie a great length, at each step
- shatterproof glass — glass designed to resist shattering
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- significance level — (in the statistical test of a hypothesis) the maximum probability of a Type I error for all distributions consistent with the null hypothesis.
- significant symbol — a verbal or nonverbal gesture, as a word or smile, that has acquired a conventionalized meaning.
- single-lens reflex — See under reflex camera. Abbreviation: SLR.
- sir george gilbert — Barbara Ann, 1928–2012, Canadian figure skater.
- sixth-form college — (in England and Wales) a college offering A-level and other courses to pupils over sixteen from local schools, esp from those that do not have sixth forms
- sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
- slim hole drilling — Slim hole drilling is drilling a well in which at least 90 percent of the hole has a diameter of seven inches or less.
- sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
- slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.