21-letter words containing i, r, a
- veterinary technician — a veterinarian’s assistant, trained to provide medical care for animals, as performing diagnostic tests or administering vaccines and medication.
- virginia (rail) fence — a zigzag fence made of rails laid across one another at the ends
- virtual device driver — (operating system) (VxD) A device driver under Windows 3.x/Windows 95 running as part of the kernel and thus having access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes as well as raw access to the hardware. VxD's usually have the filename extension .386 under Windows 3.x and .vxd under Windows 95. VxD's written for Windows 3.x can be used under Windows 95 but not vice versa.
- 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.
- voluntary association — a group of individuals joined together on the basis of mutual interest or common objectives, especially a business group that is not organized or constituted as a legal entity.
- voluntary liquidation — the process of voluntarily terminating the affairs of a business, firm, etc, by realizing its assets to discharge its liabilities or the state of a business firm, etc, having its affairs so terminated
- 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.
- washington's birthday — February 22, formerly observed as a legal holiday in most states of the U.S. in honor of the birth of George Washington.
- watenstedt-salzgitter — former name of Salzgitter.
- water of constitution — water present in a molecule that cannot be removed without disrupting the molecule.
- weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
- west university place — a city in SE Texas.
- what price something? — what are the chances of something happening now?
- whip-and-tongue graft — a graft prepared by cutting both the scion and the stock in a sloping direction and inserting a tongue in the scion into a slit in the stock.
- whistling in the dark — If you say that someone is whistling in the dark, you mean that they are trying to remain brave and convince themselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems.
- white-crowned sparrow — a North American sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys, having black and white stripes on the head.
- white-knuckle paddler — an inexpert and timid canoeist.
- wholesale price index — an indicator of price changes in the wholesale market
- wildlife photographer — someone that specializes in taking photographs of wild animals, especially in their natural habitats, and plants
- william of malmesbury — William of, William of Malmesbury.
- william the conqueror — ("the Conqueror") 1027–87, duke of Normandy 1035–87; king of England 1066–87 (son of Robert I, duke of Normandy).
- with a capital letter — (used to give emphasis to a statement)
- with one's bare hands — If someone does something with their bare hands, they do it without using any weapons or tools.
- word association test — a technique for determining a subject's associative pattern by providing a verbal stimulus to which a verbal response is required.
- word-association test — a psychological test in which the person being tested responds to a given word with the first word (or the first word in a specified category, such as an antonym) brought to mind
- workers' compensation — a government-sponsored insurance system, funded by contributions from employers, for compensating employees for injury or occupational disease suffered in connection with their employment
- writ of habeas corpus — law: petition for hearing
- xeroderma pigmentosum — a rare inherited disease characterized by sensitivity to ultraviolet light, exposure resulting in lesions and tumors of the skin and eyes.
- xilinx netlist format — (language, electronics) (XNF) A Hardware Description Language for electronic circuit design, developed by Xilinx, Inc..
- yellow lady's-slipper — a showy orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, of eastern North America, having purple-tinged yellow flowers with an inflated lip petal.
- yellow-throated vireo — an olive-green vireo, Vireo flavifrons, of eastern North America, having a bright yellow throat and breast.
- your mileage may vary — (jargon) (YMMV) The disclaimer American car manufacturers attached to EPA mileage ratings. A humourous way of saying that the thing under discussion will not necessarily give you the same results as the author. Often used to convey the hardware dependence of Unix freeware distributions.
- youth training scheme — (formerly, in Britain) a scheme, run by the Training Agency, to provide vocational training for unemployed 16–17-year-olds