18-letter words containing l, a, p, e, r, o

redevelopment area — an urban area in which all or most of the buildings are demolished and rebuilt
registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
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.
reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
reporters' gallery — an area in parliament reserved for journalists and reporters
reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
rhodes scholarship — one of a number of scholarships at Oxford University, established by the will of Cecil Rhodes, for selected students (Rhodes scholars) from the British Commonwealth and the United States.
root canal therapy — endodontics.
scholarship holder — a person who, because of academic merit, receives financial aid for their studies
seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
seasonal promotion — Seasonal promotions are items marketed to customers at the appropriate time of year, such as coats in the winter and bathing suits in the summer.
secondary syphilis — the second stage of syphilis, characterized by eruptions of the skin and mucous membrane.
self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
september holidays — a period of time in September when people do not have to go to school, college or work
shatterproof glass — glass designed to resist shattering
simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
slow-motion replay — a showing again in slow motion of a sequence of action, esp of part of a sporting contest immediately after it happens
small pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
soda-lime feldspar — plagioclase.
software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
solitary sandpiper — a North American sandpiper, Tringa solitaria, of inland wetlands, having a brownish-gray, white-spotted back and whitish underparts.
speak for yourself — If you say 'Speak for yourself' when someone has said something, you mean that what they have said is only their opinion or applies only to them.
special prosecutor — (formerly) an independent counsel.
spectroheliography — the process of obtaining an image of the sun in light of a particular wavelength, such as calcium or hydrogen, showing the distribution of the element over the surface and in the solar atmosphere, using a spectroheliograph
spectropolarimeter — an instrument for determining the extent to which plane-polarized light of various wavelengths is rotated by certain solutions, consisting of a combination of a spectroscope and a polarimeter.
spectropolariscope — an instrument combining the functions of a spectroscope with those of a polariscope.
spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
spotted flycatcher — a European woodland songbird, Muscicapa striata, with a greyish-brown streaked plumage: family Muscicapidae (Old World flycatchers)
subatomic particle — physics:
super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
super royal octavo — a book size, 63⁄4 by 101⁄4 inches
super royal quarto — a book size, 101⁄4 by 131⁄2 inches
supraorbital ridge — browridge.
temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
the lords temporal — (in Britain) peers other than bishops in their capacity as members of the House of Lords
the-cocktail-party — a play in verse (1950) by T. S. Eliot.
to all appearances — apparently
to hold your peace — If you hold or keep your peace, you do not speak, even though there is something you want or ought to say.
to learn the ropes — If you are learning the ropes, you are learning how a particular task or job is done.
to play favourites — to display favouritism
to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
traditional weapon — a weapon having ceremonial tribal significance, such as an assegai or knobkerrie
universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
upper palaeolithic — the latest of the three periods of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 40 000 bc and ending, in Europe, about 12 000 bc: characterized by the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens
upper partial tone — overtone (def 1).
wild passionflower — the maypop, Passiflora incarnata.
wildlife programme — (esp on television) a documentary whose subject is wild animals in their natural habitat or undomesticated fauna and flora generally
wilson's phalarope — a phalarope, Phalaropus tricolor, that breeds in the prairie regions of North America and winters in Argentina and Chile.

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