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20-letter words containing n, u, t, r

  • 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.
  • requiescat (in pace) — may he or she rest (in peace)
  • respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • return from the dead — (jargon)   To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of no account.
  • return of the native — a novel (1878) by Thomas Hardy.
  • return on investment — the amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested. Abbreviation: ROI.
  • return on net assets — the amount of profit computed by dividing net income before interest and taxes by the cost of net assets, usually expressed as a percentage. Abbreviation: RONA.
  • reversionary annuity — an annuity payable to a beneficiary during the period of time he or she survives the insured.
  • ring of the nibelung — Richard Wagner's tetralogy of music dramas: Das Rheingold (completed 1869), Die Walküre (completed 1870), Siegfried (completed 1876), and Götterdämmerung (completed 1876): the cycle was first performed at Bayreuth, 1876.
  • ring wall foundation — A ring wall foundation is a base made of concrete, used to put large tanks on.
  • rocky mountain basic — (language)   The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • roller-blind shutter — curtain shutter.
  • rotations per minute — revolutions per minute
  • rub sb's nose in sth — To rub someone's nose in something that they do not want to think about, such as a failing or a mistake they have made, means to remind them repeatedly about it.
  • rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
  • ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
  • run off at the mouth — Anatomy, Zoology. the opening through which an animal or human takes in food. the cavity containing the structures used in mastication. the structures enclosing or being within this cavity, considered as a whole.
  • run-time environment — (operating system)   A collection of subroutines and environment variables that provide commonly used functions and data for a program while it is running. Compare run-time support.
  • 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.
  • scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
  • scavenger's daughter — an instrument of torture that doubled over and squeezed the body so strongly and violently that blood was brought forth from the ears and nose: invented in 16th-century England.
  • schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
  • 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.
  • serra da mantiqueira — a mountain range in SE Brazil, running parallel to the coast. Highest point, 9140 feet (2785 meters).
  • setting-up exercises — gymnastic exercises for better posture, suppleness, etc
  • shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
  • slip through the net — If criminals slip through the net, they avoid being caught by the system or trap that was meant to catch them.
  • sodium meta-arsenite — sodium arsenite.
  • sound motion picture — a motion picture with a soundtrack.
  • south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
  • south orkney islands — an uninhabited group of islands in the S Atlantic, southeast of Cape Horn: formerly a dependency of the Falkland Islands; part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962 (claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty). Area: 621 sq km (240 sq miles)
  • south temperate zone — the part of the earth's surface between the tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Circle.
  • southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
  • spontaneous abortion — miscarriage (def 1).
  • spontaneous recovery — the reappearance of a response after its extinction has been followed by a period of rest
  • spontaneous-abortion — Also called voluntary abortion. the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.
  • spuyten duyvil creek — a channel in New York City at the north end of Manhattan Island, connecting the Hudson and Harlem rivers.
  • square cross-section — If a kelly has a square cross-section, it has a surface area with four equal sides, when looked at as if has been sliced through.
  • square of opposition — a diagrammatic representation of the opposition of categorical propositions.
  • squatter sovereignty — (used contemptuously by its opponents) popular sovereignty (def 2).
  • squirrel's-foot fern — ball fern.
  • standard book number — International Standard Book Number. Abbreviation: SBN.
  • state enrolled nurse — a nurse with training and examinations enabling him or her to perform many nursing services
  • ste. anne de beaupre — a village in S Quebec, in SE Canada, on the St. Lawrence, NE of Quebec: Roman Catholic shrine.
  • strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
  • subscription edition — an edition of one or more volumes for which a number of prospective purchasers place orders, usually in advance of publication.
  • subscription library — a commercial lending library
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