18-letter words containing o, r, a, l, c, n
- pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- principal diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
- protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
- provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
- radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- residential school — (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements
- resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- root canal therapy — endodontics.
- rotary clothesline — an apparatus of radiating spokes that support lines on which clothes are hung to dry
- rotational latency — (storage, hardware) The time for the start of the required sector on a disk to appear underneath the read/write head. The worst case is where it has just passed the head when the request is received. For a disk drive with N heads per surface, rotating at R revolutions per minute, the average rotational latency will be L = 30/NR seconds. Rotational latency is one component of access time.
- school for scandal — a comedy of manners (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
- second-hand dealer — a person who deals in second-hand things, such as cars, or furniture
- secondary diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- secondary syphilis — the second stage of syphilis, characterized by eruptions of the skin and mucous membrane.
- selective abortion — the aborting of particular embryos for medical or social reasons
- self-certification — statement of sick leave
- self-contradiction — an act or instance of contradicting oneself or itself.
- self-contradictory — an act or instance of contradicting oneself or itself.
- self-glorification — a glorified or more splendid form of something.
- self-gratification — the act of pleasing or satisfying oneself, especially the gratifying of one's own impulses, needs, or desires.
- self-incrimination — the act of incriminating oneself or exposing oneself to prosecution, especially by giving evidence or testimony.
- self-instructional — pertaining to or constituting learning materials and conditions arranged so that students can proceed to learn on their own with little or no supervision.
- self-mortification — the inflicting of pain or privation on oneself: He was certain that self-mortification was the only road to salvation.
- self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
- self-recrimination — the act of recriminating, or countercharging: Hope gave way to recrimination with both sides claiming the moral high ground.
- semi-microanalysis — any analytical method in which the weight of the sample is between 10 and 100 milligrams.
- sexual intercourse — genital contact, especially the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by orgasm; coitus; copulation.
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- sinclair radionics — Sinclair Research
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- social engineering — the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems.
- social environment — the environment developed by humans as contrasted with the natural environment; society as a whole, especially in its relation to the individual.
- societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
- software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
- solvent extraction — Solvent extraction is the separation of a particular substance from a mixture by dissolving that substance in a solvent that will dissolve it, but which will not dissolve any other substance in the mixture.
- stationary bicycle — an exercise bike
- store launch event — A store launch event is a special event, which publicizes the opening of a new store and at which discounts and free samples may be offered.
- strathclyde region — a former local government region in W Scotland: formed in 1975 from Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, Buteshire, Dunbartonshire, and parts of Argyllshire, Ayrshire, and Stirlingshire; replaced in 1996 by the council areas of Glasgow, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Argyll and Bute, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and East Ayrshire
- subordinate clause — a clause that modifies the principal clause or some part of it or that serves a noun function in the principal clause, as when she arrived in the sentence I was there when she arrived or that she has arrived in the sentence I doubt that she has arrived.
- task control block — (architecture) An MVS control block used to communicate information about tasks within an address space that are connected to an MVS subsystem such as MQSeries for MVS/ESA or CICS.