17-letter words containing o, u, i, s
- professional foul — In football, if a player commits a professional foul, they deliberately do something which is against the rules in order to prevent another player from scoring a goal.
- prostatic utricle — a small pouch near the prostate gland that opens into the urethra.
- prusso-danish war — a war of 1864 between Prussia and Denmark by which Denmark lost Schleswig-Holstein.
- pseudo-aggressive — characterized by or tending toward unprovoked offensives, attacks, invasions, or the like; militantly forward or menacing: aggressive acts against a neighboring country.
- pseudo-biological — pertaining to biology.
- pseudo-democratic — pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy.
- pseudo-historical — of, pertaining to, treating, or characteristic of history or past events: historical records; historical research.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- pseudo-moralistic — a person who teaches or inculcates morality.
- pseudo-scientific — any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no scientific basis.
- psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
- psycholinguistics — the study of the relationship between language and the cognitive or behavioral characteristics of those who use it.
- psychotherapeutic — psychotherapy.
- public prosecutor — an officer charged with the conduct of criminal prosecution in the interest of the public.
- public television — a type of noncommercial, usually educational, television programming funded by the government, grants, viewers, and corporations. Compare educational television.
- pull one's weight — the amount or quantity of heaviness or mass; amount a thing weighs.
- purple of cassius — a purple pigment precipitated as a sol by the interaction of gold chloride and a solution of stannic acid and stannous chloride: used chiefly in the manufacture of ruby glass, ceramic glazes, and enamels.
- put the kibosh on — nonsense.
- pyroligneous acid — a yellowish, acidic, water-soluble liquid, containing about 10 percent acetic acid, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood: used for smoking meats.
- pyrosulfuric acid — a strong, crystalline acid, H2S2O7, prepared commercially as a heavy, oily, fuming liquid: used in making explosives and dyes, as a sulfating agent, etc.
- quantity discount — When you receive a quantity discount from a store or supplier, you pay less because you have bought a large quantity of goods. Also known as bulk buying discount.
- quantity surveyor — A quantity surveyor is a person who calculates the cost and amount of materials and workers needed for a job such as building a house or a road.
- quasi-competitive — of, pertaining to, involving, or decided by competition: competitive sports; a competitive examination.
- queen of puddings — a pudding made of moist but firm breadcrumb and custard mixture topped with jam and meringue
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- reconstructionism — a 20th-century movement among U.S. Jews, founded by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, advocating that Judaism, being a culture and way of life as well as a religion, is in sum a religious civilization requiring constant adaptation to contemporary conditions so that Jews can identify more readily and meaningfully with the Jewish community.
- reconstructionist — an advocate or supporter of Reconstruction or Reconstructionism.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- redistributionist — a person who believes in, advocates, or supports income redistribution.
- reduce to silence — If someone or something reduces you to silence, they make you feel so upset or confused that you cannot speak.
- refuse collection — the collection of rubbish and waste, usually in a rubbish or refuse truck, before final disposal
- reported question — A reported question is a question which is reported using a clause beginning with a word such as 'why' or 'whether', as in 'I asked her why she'd done it'.
- res ipsa loquitur — the rule that an injury is due to the defendant's negligence when that which caused it was under his or her control or management and the injury would not have happened had proper management been observed.
- rescue operations — operations or organized procedures to bring people or a person out of danger, attack, harm, etc
- resurrection fern — a drought-resistant, evergreen, epiphytic fern, Polypodium polypodioides, of subtropical to tropical America, appearing to be a ball of coiled, dead leaves in the dry season but reviving with moisture.
- revascularization — the restoration of the blood circulation of an organ or area, achieved by unblocking obstructed or disrupted blood vessels or by surgically implanting replacements.
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- ringer's solution — an aqueous solution of the chlorides of sodium, potassium, and calcium in the same concentrations as normal body fluids, used chiefly in the laboratory for sustaining tissue.
- rio grande do sul — a state in S Brazil. 107,923 sq. mi. (279,520 sq. km). Capital: Pôrto Alegre.
- road construction — the building of roads
- rocket propulsion — propulsion of an object by thrust developed by a rocket.
- royal institution — a British society founded in 1799 for the dissemination of scientific knowledge
- rush-hour traffic — the large number of vehicles that move along roads, travelling to or from work at the beginning and end of the working day
- russian wolfhound — borzoi.
- safety precaution — a precaution that is taken in order to ensure that something is safe and not dangerous
- saint bonaventure — Saint ("the Seraphic Doctor") 1221–74, Italian scholastic theologian.
- samurai tradition — the body of customs, thought, practices, etc belonging to the samurai warrior caste of Japan
- sanctimoniousness — making a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, righteousness, etc.: They resented his sanctimonious comments on immorality in America.
- sanctions-busting — the deliberate disregarding of sanctions that are in force against a state, organization, etc