21-letter words containing k, r
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- to sink without trace — If you say that someone or something sinks without trace or sinks without a trace, you mean that they stop existing or stop being successful very suddenly and completely.
- to stick in your mind — If something sticks in your mind, it remains firmly in your memory.
- to stick to your guns — If you stick to your guns, you continue to have your own opinion about something even though other people are trying to tell you that you are wrong.
- to take the high road — to take the course of action which is safest and most familiar
- to take your mind off — If something takes your mind off a problem or unpleasant situation, it helps you to forget about it for a while.
- to think better of it — If you intend to do something and then think better of it, you decide not to do it because you realize it would not be sensible.
- to work your guts out — to work very hard
- trans-alaska pipeline — a pipeline system opened in 1977 that transports oil 800 miles (1300 km) across Alaska, from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope S to Valdez harbor.
- trustee in bankruptcy — a person appointed by a court to administer the property of a bankrupt.
- uk overseas territory — any of the territories that are governed by the UK but lie outside the British Isles; many were formerly British crown colonies: includes Bermuda, Falkland Islands, and Montserrat
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
- 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.
- weak head normal form — (reduction, theory) (WHNF) A lambda expression is in weak head normal form (WHNF) if it is a head normal form (HNF) or any lambda abstraction. I.e. the top level is not a redex. The term was coined by Simon Peyton Jones to make explicit the difference between head normal form (HNF) and what graph reduction systems produce in practice. A lambda abstraction with a reducible body, e.g. \ x . ((\ y . y+x) 2) is in WHNF but not HNF. To reduce this expression to HNF would require reduction of the lambda body: (\ y . y+x) 2 --> 2+x Reduction to WHNF avoids the name capture problem with its need for alpha conversion of an inner lambda abstraction and so is preferred in practical graph reduction systems. The same principle is often used in strict languages such as Scheme to provide call-by-name evaluation by wrapping an expression in a lambda abstraction with no arguments: D = delay E = \ () . E The value of the expression is obtained by applying it to the empty argument list:
- 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-knuckle paddler — an inexpert and timid canoeist.
- 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