18-letter words containing p, i, e, c, r
- superior vena cava — See under vena cava.
- supporting actress — an actress playing a supporting role
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- sweptwing aircraft — an aircraft which has wings that are swept (usually) backwards
- sympathetic strike — sympathy strike.
- sympathetic string — a thin wire string, as in various obsolete musical instruments, designed to vibrate sympathetically with the bowed or plucked strings to reinforce the sound.
- telephone receiver — a device, as in a telephone, that converts changes in an electric current into sound.
- the baptist church — any of various Protestant churches that believe in the baptism of believers
- the general public — the people in a society; people in general
- the practicalities — the real facts or details of a situation, as opposed to its theoretical aspects
- the-cocktail-party — a play in verse (1950) by T. S. Eliot.
- threatened species — a species likely, in the near future, to become an endangered species within all or much of its range.
- ticker-tape parade — a parade honoring a visiting dignitary, hero, or the like in which confetti, shredded newspapers, or the like are showered into the streets from buildings along the parade route.
- tip of the iceberg — a large floating mass of ice, detached from a glacier and carried out to sea.
- to cast aspersions — If you cast aspersions on someone or something, you suggest that they are not very good in some way.
- to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
- under-compensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- under-depreciation — decrease in value due to wear and tear, decay, decline in price, etc.
- unfair competition — acts done by a seller to confuse or deceive the public with intent to acquire a larger portion of the market, as by cutting prices below cost, misleading advertising, selling a spurious product under a false identity, etc.
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- up to one's tricks — If you say that someone is up to their tricks or up to their old tricks, you disapprove of them because they are behaving in the dishonest or deceitful way in which they typically behave.
- upper middle class — wealthy, highly-educated people
- upper palaeolithic — the latest of the three periods of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 40 000 bc and ending, in Europe, about 12 000 bc: characterized by the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens
- vectorcardiography — a method of determining the direction and magnitude of the electrical forces of the heart.
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- videotape recorder — a device for recording television programs on magnetic tape for delayed transmission or for storage.
- vulcan nerve pinch — (jargon) (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is
- ! Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12. Compare quadruple bucky. - warehouse capacity — the amount of storage space in a warehouse
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.