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20-letter words containing n, o, c, e

  • recreational vehicle — a van or utility vehicle used for recreational purposes, as camping, and often equipped with living facilities. Abbreviation: RV.
  • recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
  • recursive subroutine — a subroutine that can call itself as part of its execution
  • reflecting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
  • refracting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
  • regenerative cooling — Physics. a method of cooling a gas, utilizing the rapid expansion of a compressed portion of the gas, before it becomes liquid, to cool the remainder.
  • relative conjunction — a conjunction that introduces a relative clause
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • respecter of persons — one whose behavior toward people is influenced by their social status, prestige, etc.
  • restriction fragment — a length of DNA cut from the strand by a restriction enzyme.
  • restrictive covenant — a covenant with a clause that restricts the action of any party to it, especially an agreement among property owners not to sell to members of particular minority groups.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • revolving presidency — a form of presidency in which the president and vice-president, or countries or bodies acting as such, switch roles after a set period and then back again and so on
  • rise to the occasion — to have the courage, wit, etc, to meet the special demands of a situation
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • romantic involvement — the condition of being in a romantic or sexual relationship
  • root canal treatment — dental treatment
  • ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
  • saint andrew's cross — a low evergreen shrub, Ascyrum hypericoides, native to temperate and subtropical America, having flowers in clusters of three: often cultivated.
  • saint george's cross — the Greek cross as used in the flag of Great Britain.
  • saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
  • santa cruz operation — (SCO) A supplier of Unix systems for Intel microprocessors. They supply Xenix and Open Desktop. Founded in 1979, SCO became a public company in May, 1993 and trades on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol SCOC. SCO maintains its world headquarters in Santa Cruz, California, USA; a European headquarters in Watford, England; a Government Systems Group in Reston, Virginia; and offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and throughout Europe and the United States. In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited of Cambridge, England, the leading supplier of Unix System windowing software.
  • save someone's bacon — to help someone to escape from danger
  • scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
  • schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
  • schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
  • scientific socialism — Marxist socialism
  • season ticket holder — a person who has a season ticket
  • second earl of essex — 2nd Earl of, Devereux, Robert.
  • second international — an international association formed in 1889 in Paris, uniting socialistic groups or parties of various countries and holding international congresses from time to time: in 1923 it joined with the Vienna International to form the Labor and Socialist International. Compare international (def 6).
  • second law of motion — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
  • second-class citizen — a citizen, especially a member of a minority group, who is denied the social, political, and economic benefits of citizenship.
  • second-degree murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
  • second-hand bookshop — a shop selling second-hand books
  • secure accommodation — an institution where young offenders are kept in custody
  • security association — (networking)   The relationship between two or more entities (typically, a computer, but could be a user on a computer, or software component) which describes how the entities will use security services, such as encryption, to communicate. See RFC 1825.
  • send someone packing — to dismiss or get rid of (someone) peremptorily
  • senior aircraftwoman — a rank in the Royal Air Force comparable to that of a private in the army, though not the lowest rank in the Royal Air Force
  • separation allowance — an allowance paid to a member of the military when they are forced to be apart from their family due to their military duties
  • service access point — (networking)   (SAP) The OSI term for the component of a network address which identifies the individual application on a host which is sending or receiving a packet. Different SAPs distinguish between different services or applications on a host, e.g. electronic mail, FTP, HTTP.
  • settle accounts with — to pay or receive a balance due
  • sex change operation — a surgical operation designed to change a person's physical sexual characteristics to those of the opposite sex
  • short back and sides — If a man has a short back and sides, his hair is cut very short at the back and sides with slightly thicker, longer hair on the top of the head.
  • silicon tetrahydride — silane (def 1).
  • sinfonia concertante — a type of concerto for two or more solo instruments accompanied by an orchestra
  • skull and crossbones — a representation of a front view of a human skull above two crossed bones, originally used on pirates' flags and now used as a warning sign, as in designating substances as poisons.
  • slow-scan television — a technique or system in which an image is scanned electronically more slowly than is normally done in order to produce images, especially of still pictures, that can be transmitted economically, as over a telephone line, and displayed on a television screen.
  • societal development — the formation and transformation of social life, customs, institutions, etc.
  • soft gelatin capsule — A soft gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of liquid or powder, and which dissolves more quickly than a hard gelatin capsule.
  • solitary confinement — the confinement of a prisoner in a cell or other place in which he or she is completely isolated from others.
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