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20-letter words containing i, r, a, t, o, n

  • elephant in the room — an obvious truth deliberately ignored by all parties in a situation
  • elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
  • embryo vitrification — a method of in vitro fertilization in which the embryo is exposed to a vitreous solution and frozen before being thawed and implanted into the uterus
  • endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
  • entrance examination — admission test
  • entry qualifications — the qualifications people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to have
  • environment variable — (programming, operating system)   A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
  • environmental health — the issues dealt with by the Environmental Health Department of a local authority, such as prevention of the spread of communicable diseases, food safety and hygiene, control of infestation by insects or rodents, etc
  • environmental impact — the impact on the environment created by an industry, service, plan, or project
  • epitaxial transistor — a transistor made by depositing a thin pure layer of semiconductor material (epitaxial layer) onto a crystalline support by epitaxy. The layer acts as one of the electrode regions, usually the collector
  • equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
  • equivalence relation — (mathematics)   A relation R on a set including elements a, b, c, which is reflexive (a R a), symmetric (a R b => b R a) and transitive (a R b R c => a R c). An equivalence relation defines an equivalence class. See also partial equivalence relation.
  • erythema infectiosum — a mild infectious disease of childhood, caused by a virus, characterized by fever and a red rash spreading from the cheeks to the limbs and trunk
  • estrela mountain dog — a sturdy well-built dog of a Portuguese breed with a long thick coat and a thick tuft of hair round the neck, often used as a guard dog
  • external respiration — exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide across external or respiratory surfaces, as gills or lungs, in multicellular organisms
  • factor in (or into) — to include as a factor
  • factor of production — any instrument, agent, etc., employed in the production of goods and services.
  • feather in one's cap — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
  • federal constitution — Constitution of the United States.
  • federation of malaya — a federation of the nine Malay States of the Malay Peninsula and two of the Straits Settlements (Malacca and Penang): formed in 1948: became part of the British Commonwealth in 1957 and joined Malaysia in 1963
  • fermentation alcohol — alcohol (def 1).
  • fermentation-alcohol — Also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, ethanol, fermentation alcohol. a colorless, limpid, volatile, flammable, water-miscible liquid, C 2 H 5 OH, having an etherlike odor and pungent, burning taste, the intoxicating principle of fermented liquors, produced by yeast fermentation of certain carbohydrates, as grains, molasses, starch, or sugar, or obtained synthetically by hydration of ethylene or as a by-product of certain hydrocarbon syntheses: used chiefly as a solvent in the extraction of specific substances, in beverages, medicines, organic synthesis, lotions, tonics, colognes, rubbing compounds, as an automobile radiator antifreeze, and as a rocket fuel. Compare denatured alcohol, methyl alcohol.
  • financial controller — a senior executive in usually commercial organization who is in charge of financial affairs and oversees such things as the preparation of budgets and accounts
  • first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
  • fission-track dating — the dating of samples of minerals by comparing the tracks in them by fission fragments of the uranium nuclei they contain, before and after irradiation by neutrons
  • fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
  • fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
  • florence nightingale — Florence ("the Lady with the Lamp") 1820–1910, English nurse: reformer of hospital conditions and procedures; reorganizer of nurse's training programs.
  • for all one is worth — good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • for your information — (FYI) A subseries of RFCs that are not technical standards or descriptions of protocols. FYIs convey general information about topics related to TCP/IP or the Internet. See also STD.
  • forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
  • fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
  • formative assessment — ongoing assessment of a pupil's educational development within a particular subject area
  • forty-ninth parallel — an informal name for the Canadian border with the USA, which is in part delineated by the parallel line of latitude at 49°N
  • fourth international — a loose federation of small groups of radical socialists formed in 1936 under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and hostile to the Soviet Union. Compare international (def 6).
  • fractionating column — a long vertical cylinder used in fractional distillation, in which internal reflux enables separation of high and low boiling fractions to take place
  • frankfurt horizontal — Craniometry. the plane established when right and left poria and left orbitale are in the same horizontal plane.
  • frequency modulation — FM.
  • fridtjof nansen land — Franz Josef Land.
  • friends of the earth — an organization of environmentalists and conservationists whose aim is to promote the sustainable use of the earth's resources
  • front-end volatility — Front-end volatility is the ability of the fractions with lower boiling points, such as butane, to evaporate at normal temperatures.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
  • gastroduodenostomies — Plural form of gastroduodenostomy.
  • general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
  • general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
  • generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
  • give one's right arm — to be prepared to make any sacrifice
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