18-letter words containing i, r, g, u
- reciprocating pump — A reciprocating pump is a pump which uses a backward and forward movement to move a fluid.
- recruiting officer — a person whose job is to recruit staff, esp on behalf of the military
- recruitment agency — company that places job candidates
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- reference counting — (programming) A garbage collection technique where each memory cell contains a count of the number of other cells which point to it. If this count reaches zero the cell is freed and its pointers to other cells are followed to decrement their counts, and so on recursively. This technique cannot cope with circular data structures. Cells in such structures refer (indirectly) to themselves and so will never have a zero reference count. This means they would never be reclaimed, even when there are no references from outside the structure.
- 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.
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- rufous hummingbird — a reddish-brown hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus, of western North America.
- run length limited — (storage) (RLL) The most popular scheme for encoding data on magnetic disks. RLL packs up to 50% more data on a disk than MFM. Groups of bits are mapped to specific patterns of flux. The density of flux transitions is limited by the spatial resolution of the disk and frequency response of the head and electronics. However, transitions must be close enough to allow reliable clock recovery. RLL implementations vary according to the minimum and maximum allowed numbers of transition cells between transitions. For example, the most common variant today, RLL 1,7, can have a transition in every other cell and must have at least one transition every seven cells. The exact mapping from bits to transitions is essentially arbitrary. Other schemes include GCR, FM, Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM). See also: PRML.
- running commentary — non-stop description of sth
- running martingale — martingale (def 2).
- safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- security agreement — business: contract
- self-raising flour — flour with baking powder
- self-understanding — mental process of a person who comprehends; comprehension; personal interpretation: My understanding of the word does not agree with yours.
- shift one's ground — to change one's argument or defense
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shugart associates — (company) The disk drive company, founded by Alan F. Shugart, which developed SCSI. Alan left Shugart Associates in 1974 [did he quit or was he fired?]. Shugart Associates was bought, and eventually shut down by Xerox.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- six-finger country — an isolated area considered as being inhabited by people who practise inbreeding
- ski-mountaineering — a combination of the sports of skiing and mountaineering, for example by climbing up a mountain then skiing down it
- song without words — a song which only consists of a tune or melody and does not have any lyrics
- specimen signature — a signature to be compared to an original signature in order to verify someone's identity
- squinting modifier — a word or phrase that can modify either the words that precede it or those that follow, as frequently in the sentence Studying frequently is tedious.
- squirting cucumber — a Mediterranean plant, Ecballium elaterium, of the gourd family, whose ripened fruit forcibly ejects the seeds and juice.
- stirling's formula — a relation that approximates the value of n factorial (n!), expressed as .
- submaxillary gland — submandibular gland.
- sugarloaf mountain — a mountain in SE Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. 1280 feet (390 meters).
- summary proceeding — a mode of trial authorized by statute to be held before a judge without the usual full hearing.
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- super middleweight — a boxer weighing up to 168 pounds (75.6 kg), between middleweight and light heavyweight.
- superciliary ridge — browridge.
- superstring theory — any supersymmetric string theory in which each type of elementary particle is treated as a vibration of a single fundamental string (superstring) at a particular frequency.
- supporting actress — an actress playing a supporting role
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- sustaining program — a radio or television program without a commercial sponsor.
- the general public — the people in a society; people in general
- theodore gericault — (Jean Louis André) Théodore [zhahn lwee ahn-drey tey-aw-dawr] /ʒɑ̃ lwi ɑ̃ˈdreɪ teɪ ɔˈdɔr/ (Show IPA), 1791–1824, French painter.
- there you go again — Phrases such as there you go again are used to show annoyance at someone who is repeating something that has annoyed you in the past.
- thin on the ground — If people or things of a particular kind are thin on the ground, there are very few of them.
- third man argument — (in the philosophy of Aristotle) the argument against the existence of Platonic Forms that since the Form of Man is itself a perfect man, a further form (the "third" man) would be required to explain this, and so ad infinitum
- thought experiment — Physics. a demonstration or calculation that is based on the postulates of a theory, as relativity, and that demonstrates or clarifies the consequences of the postulates.
- to gird your loins — If you gird your loins, you prepare to do something difficult or dangerous.
- to grit your teeth — If you grit your teeth, you make up your mind to carry on even if the situation is very difficult.
- to spill your guts — if someone spills their guts, they tell you everything about something secret or private