18-letter words containing i, c, e, p
- ticker-tape parade — a parade honoring a visiting dignitary, hero, or the like in which confetti, shredded newspapers, or the like are showered into the streets from buildings along the parade route.
- tip of the iceberg — a large floating mass of ice, detached from a glacier and carried out to sea.
- to be tickled pink — If you are tickled pink, you are extremely pleased about something.
- to cast aspersions — If you cast aspersions on someone or something, you suggest that they are not very good in some way.
- to fall into place — If things fall into place, events happen naturally to produce a situation you want.
- to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
- to pick and choose — If you pick and choose, you carefully choose only things that you really want and reject the others.
- to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
- under-compensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- under-depreciation — decrease in value due to wear and tear, decay, decline in price, etc.
- unfair competition — acts done by a seller to confuse or deceive the public with intent to acquire a larger portion of the market, as by cutting prices below cost, misleading advertising, selling a spurious product under a false identity, etc.
- unit magnetic pole — the unit of magnetic pole strength equal to the strength of a magnetic pole that repels a similar pole with a force of one dyne, the two poles being placed in a vacuum and separated by a distance of one centimeter.
- unit-linked policy — a life-assurance policy, the investment benefits of which are directly in proportion to the number of units in a unit trust purchased on the policyholder's behalf
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- up to one's tricks — If you say that someone is up to their tricks or up to their old tricks, you disapprove of them because they are behaving in the dishonest or deceitful way in which they typically behave.
- upper middle class — wealthy, highly-educated people
- upper palaeolithic — the latest of the three periods of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 40 000 bc and ending, in Europe, about 12 000 bc: characterized by the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens
- vectorcardiography — a method of determining the direction and magnitude of the electrical forces of the heart.
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- video compact disc — (storage) (VCD) A storage format used for film distribution.
- videotape recorder — a device for recording television programs on magnetic tape for delayed transmission or for storage.
- vulcan nerve pinch — (jargon) (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is
- ! Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12. Compare quadruple bucky. - warehouse capacity — the amount of storage space in a warehouse
- welland ship canal — a ship canal in S Canada, in Ontario, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario: 8 locks. 25 miles (40 km) long.
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.