21-letter words containing n, a, s
- purchasing department — the group of staff within an organization that is responsible for buying goods or products
- push the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
- put in the hard yards — to make a great effort to achieve an end
- put sb in their place — If you put someone in their place, you show them that they are less important or clever than they think they are.
- put someone's back up — to annoy someone
- quantitative analysis — Chemistry. the analysis of a substance to determine the amounts and proportions of its chemical constituents. Compare qualitative analysis.
- quantitative genetics — population genetics.
- quartermaster general — a general in command of the Quartermaster Corps.
- queen's-pawn openings — a class of chess openings in which the pawn in front of the queen is advanced two squares on the first move.
- racial discrimination — prejudice based on race
- radius of convergence — a positive number so related to a given power series that the power series converges for every number whose absolute value is less than this particular number.
- range of significance — the set of subjects for which a given predicate is intelligible
- rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
- rattle someone's cage — to upset or anger someone
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- reading comprehension — a text that students use to help them improve their reading skills, by reading it and answering questions relating to the text. Sometimes used as a test or examination of reading skills. A reading comprehension can be in the student's own or another language
- real estate insurance — Real estate insurance is insurance of property, land, and buildings.
- real operating system — (operating system, abuse) The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
- reckless endangerment — a crime whereby a person behaves in a reckless manner which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person
- recompression chamber — hyperbaric chamber.
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- reconnaissance patrol — a patrol made by soldiers in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- reduced circumstances — If you say that someone is living in reduced circumstances, you mean that they do not have as much money as they used to have.
- registration document — a document giving identification details of a motor vehicle, including its manufacturer, date of registration, engine and chassis numbers, and owner's name
- relaxation oscillator — a nonsinusoidal oscillator, the timing of which is controlled by the charge and discharge time constants of resistance and capacitance components
- repatriation expenses — Repatriation expenses are the costs involved in transporting a claimant or their body back to their own country after they have been injured or killed in a foreign country.
- requirements analysis — (project) The process of reviewing a business's processes to determine the business needs and functional requirements that a system must meet.
- residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
- rest on one's laurels — Also called bay, sweet bay. a small European evergreen tree, Laurus nobilis, of the laurel family, having dark, glossy green leaves. Compare laurel family.
- reverse polish syntax — postfix notation
- reverse transcriptase — a retrovirus enzyme that synthesizes DNA from viral RNA, the reverse of the usual DNA-to-RNA replication: used in genetic engineering to clone genes from RNA strands.
- revillagigedo islands — an uninhabited island group belonging to Mexico, in the Pacific Ocean, SSW of the Baja California peninsula: Socorro is the largest island. 320 sq. mi. (830 sq. km).
- ring-around-the-rosey — a children's game in which the players sing while going around in a circle and squat when the lyrics “all fall down” are sung.
- rocky mountain locust — a migratory locust, Melanoplus spretus, that occurs in North America, especially the Great Plains, where swarms cause great damage to crops and other vegetation.
- rocky mountain oyster — mountain oyster.
- rolling in the aisles — (of an audience) overcome with laughter
- rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
- s-k reduction machine — An abstract machine defined by Professor David Turner to evaluate combinator expressions represented as binary graphs. Named after the two basic combinators, S and K.
- safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
- sail against the wind — to sail a course that slants slightly away from the true direction of the wind; sail closehauled
- saint anthony's cross — tau cross.
- saint elias mountains — a mountain range between SE Alaska and the SW Yukon, Canada. Highest peak: Mount Logan, 5959 m (19 550 ft)
- saint lawrence seaway — a series of channels, locks, and canals between Montreal and the mouth of Lake Ontario, a distance of 182 miles (293 km), enabling most deep-draft vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean, up the St. Lawrence River, to all the Great Lakes ports: developed jointly by the U.S. and Canada.
- saint martin's summer — mild, warm weather similar to Indian summer, occurring in November.
- saint valentine's day — February 14, observed in honor of St. Valentine as a day for the exchange of valentines and other tokens of affection.
- saint-maur-des-fosses — a town in N central France, near Paris, on the Marne River.
- salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
- sales finance company — a finance company that purchases, at a discount, installment contracts from dealers or that finances retail sales.
- sampling distribution — the distribution of a statistic based on all possible random samples that can be drawn from a given population.
- san gabriel mountains — a mountain range in S California, N of Los Angeles. Highest peak, San Antonio Peak, 10,080 feet (3072 meters).