21-letter words containing o, s, t, i, n, a
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- 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!.
- 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
- 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.
- residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
- reverse polish syntax — postfix notation
- 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.
- 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-maur-des-fosses — a town in N central France, near Paris, on the Marne River.
- salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
- 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).
- san gorgonio mountain — a mountain in S California: highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains. 11,502 feet (3506 meters).
- sanitation department — the department of local government responsible for collecting and disposing of refuse
- sao tome and principe — Democratic Republic of, a republic in W Africa, comprising the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, in the Gulf of Guinea, N of the equator: a former overseas province of Portugal; gained independence in 1975. 372 sq. mi. (964 sq. km). Capital: São Tomé.
- saponification number — the number of milligrams of potassium hydroxide required to saponify one gram of a given ester, especially a glyceride.
- satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
- scalar multiplication — an operation used in the definition of a vector space in which the product of a scalar and a vector is a vector, the operation is distributive over the addition of both scalars and vectors, and is associative with multiplication of scalars
- schema definition set — (SDS) Something in Portable Common Tool Environment.
- schlieren photography — a type of photography which records schlieren
- scintillation counter — a device for detecting and measuring radioactivity, having a crystal scintillator, a photoelectric cell sensitive to the light from scintillations, and an amplifier.
- seating accommodation — the provision of seats for people in a room, building, etc
- secondary containment — Secondary containment is a system for dealing with hazardous spills.
- self-characterization — portrayal; description: the actor's characterization of a politician.
- sentential connective — any of several words or their equivalent symbols used in logical formulas to connect propositions, as “or,” “not,” “and,” “if and only if.”.
- sequoia national park — a national park in central California: giant sequoia trees. 604 sq. mi. (1565 sq. km).
- serbia and montenegro — a former country in SE Europe, consisting of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro; replaced the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2003, and dissolved in 2006 following Montenegro’s decision to secede
- sheppard's correction — a method of correcting the bias in standard deviations and higher moments of distributions that arises from grouping values of the variable.
- sick to one's stomach — afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
- sierra madre oriental — the system of mountains in the east of Mexico
- sieve of eratosthenes — a method of obtaining prime numbers by sifting out the composite numbers from the set of natural numbers so that only prime numbers remain.
- signal-to-noise ratio — the ratio of one parameter, such as power of a wanted signal to the same parameter of the noise at a specified point in an electronic circuit, etc
- silicon tetrachloride — a colorless, fuming liquid, SiCl 4 , used chiefly for making smoke screens and various derivatives of silicon.
- silicon tetrafluoride — a colorless, fuming gas, SiF 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fluosilicic acid.
- simple actor language — (language) (SAL) A minimal actor language, used for teaching in:
- single spanish burton — a tackle having a runner as well as the fall supporting the load, giving a mechanical advantage of three, neglecting friction.
- sinusoidal projection — an equal-area projection in which parallels are straight lines spaced at regular intervals, the central meridian is a straight line one-half the length of the equator, and the other meridians are curves symmetrical to the central meridian.
- snap one's fingers at — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
- snappy video snapshot — (hardware) (registered trademark) A frame grabber for the IBM PC designed and marketed by Play, Inc..
- snr bandwidth product — (communications) The integral of the SNR over frequency. The SNR bandwidth product is an important limit in the capacity of a communication channel.