18-letter words containing l, a, g, u
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- phytohemagglutinin — a lectin, obtained from the red kidney bean, that binds to the membranes of T cells and stimulates metabolic activity, cell division, etc.
- pig-tailed macaque — a forest-dwelling southeast Asian macaque, Macaca nemestrina, having a short, curled tail, colonized for animal behavior studies.
- play silly buggers — to fool around and waste time
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
- principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
- publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- quevedo y villegas — Francisco Gómez de. 1580–1645, Spanish poet and writer, noted for his satires and the picaresque novel La historia de la vida del Buscón (1626)
- rear its ugly head — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- 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 hexahedron — a solid cube with six square faces
- regular tertiaries — of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- rule of engagement — a directive issued by a military authority controlling the use and degree of force, especially specifying circumstances and limitations for engaging in combat.
- 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 equipment — Sampling equipment is equipment which is used to remove small amounts of something for analysis and monitoring.
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- 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.
- seven-league boots — mythical boots that allowed the wearer to travel seven leagues (a former unit of measurement), ie a great length, at each step
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- soft touch sealing — Soft touch sealing is a copolymer seal for a tank, with characteristics designed for softness, used instead of a metal seal to help avoid fire when sparks are generated.
- solid-fuel heating — heating that uses solid fuel, such as coal or coke
- spackling compound — spackle
- stirling's formula — a relation that approximates the value of n factorial (n!), expressed as .
- structural geology — the branch of geology dealing with the structure and distribution of the rocks that make up the crust of the earth. Also called tectonics. Compare structure (def 7a).
- subliminal message — a message passed to the human mind without the mind being consciously aware of it, as, for example, in advertising
- 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).
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- superciliary ridge — browridge.
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- the beautiful game — football
- the class struggle — the continual conflict between the capitalist and working classes for economic and political power
- 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.
- to plough a furrow — If you say that someone ploughs a particular furrow or ploughs their own furrow, you mean that their activities or interests are different or isolated from those of other people.
- to take the plunge — If you take the plunge, you decide to do something that you consider difficult or risky.
- touch-in-goal line — either of the two touchlines at each end of the field between the goal line and the dead-ball line.
- ultrasonic testing — the scanning of material with an ultrasonic beam, during which reflections from faults in the material can be detected: a powerful nondestructive test method
- ultrasonic welding — the use of high-energy vibration of ultrasonic frequency to produce a weld between two components which are held in close contact
- unilateral neglect — a symptom of brain damage in which a person is unaware of one side of his or her body and of anything in the external world on the same side
- 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.
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.