18-letter words containing p, a, r, i, s, u
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- pyramus and thisbe — (in Greek legend) two lovers of Babylon: Pyramus, wrongly supposing Thisbe to be dead, killed himself and she, encountering him in his death throes, did the same
- pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
- radiation exposure — exposure to radiant energy or to the particles emitted in the transfer of radiant energy, esp the particles and gamma rays emitted in nuclear decay; exposure to radioactive substances
- radiation pressure — the pressure exerted on a surface by electromagnetic radiation or by sound waves.
- regular expression — 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
- resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
- sodium-vapour lamp — a type of electric lamp consisting of a glass tube containing neon and sodium vapour at low pressure through which an electric current is passed to give an orange light. They are used in street lighting
- special prosecutor — (formerly) an independent counsel.
- specimen signature — a signature to be compared to an original signature in order to verify someone's identity
- statutory sick pay — the pay an employee is legally entitled to when sick
- subatomic particle — physics:
- subsidiary company — a company whose controlling interest is owned by another company.
- summary proceeding — a mode of trial authorized by statute to be held before a judge without the usual full hearing.
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- superciliary ridge — browridge.
- superior vena cava — See under vena cava.
- supporting actress — an actress playing a supporting role
- supportive therapy — any treatment, such as the intravenous administration of certain fluids, designed to reinforce or sustain the physiological well-being of a patient
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- sustaining program — a radio or television program without a commercial sponsor.
- temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
- the baptist church — any of various Protestant churches that believe in the baptism of believers
- thiosulphuric acid — an unstable acid known only in solutions and in the form of its salts. Formula: H2S2O3
- to play favourites — to display favouritism
- to speak your mind — If you speak your mind, you say firmly and honestly what you think about a situation, even if this may offend or upset people.
- under-compensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- unisys corporation — (company) The company formed in 1984-5 when Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry Corporation. This was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined. Unisys is one of the largest providers of information services, technology, and software in the world. They employ about 49,000 people and do business in some 100 countries. In 1994 about 80 percent of revenue was derived from commercial information systems and services, with the remainder coming from electronic systems and services for the defense market. The defense business was sold to Loral in early 1995. Slightly more than half of Unisys's revenue is from business in the United States. They specialise in providing business-critical solutions, based on open information networks, for organisations that operate in transaction-intensive environments. These organisations include financial services companies, airlines, telecommunications companies, government agencies, and other commercial enterprises. In August 1994, quarterly sales were $1799M and profits $50M.
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- upper middle class — wealthy, highly-educated people
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- warehouse capacity — the amount of storage space in a warehouse
- weberian apparatus — (in certain fishes) a chain of small bones and ligaments connecting the inner ear with the air bladder.
- women at point sur — a narrative poem (1927) by Robinson Jeffers.