18-letter words containing p, o, l, n

redevelopment area — an urban area in which all or most of the buildings are demolished and rebuilt
reentering polygon — a polygon having one or more reentering angles.
registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
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.
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
resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
ribbon development — housing or commercial buildings built along a stretch of road.
root canal therapy — endodontics.
seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
seasonal promotion — Seasonal promotions are items marketed to customers at the appropriate time of year, such as coats in the winter and bathing suits in the summer.
secondary syphilis — the second stage of syphilis, characterized by eruptions of the skin and mucous membrane.
segmental phonemes — phonemes consisting of sound segments; hence, the vowel, consonant, and semivowel sounds of a language
self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
self-contemplation — the act or process of thinking about oneself or one's values, beliefs, behavior, etc.
self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
sell someone a pup — to swindle someone by selling him something worthless
silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
slow-motion replay — a showing again in slow motion of a sequence of action, esp of part of a sporting contest immediately after it happens
small pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
solitary sandpiper — a North American sandpiper, Tringa solitaria, of inland wetlands, having a brownish-gray, white-spotted back and whitish underparts.
southampton island — an island in N Canada, in the Northwest Territories at the entrance to Hudson Bay. 19,100 sq. mi. (49,470 sq. km).
spackling compound — spackle
special collection — a collection of materials segregated from a general library collection according to form, subject, age, condition, rarity, source, or value.
spin stabilization — a technique by which a bullet, rocket, etc, is made to spin around its longitudinal axis to assist it in maintaining a steady flight path
stepping-off place — jumping-off place (def 2).
subject complement — a word or a group of words, usually functioning as an adjective or noun, that is used in the predicate following a copula and describes or is identified with the subject of the sentence, as sleepy in The travelers became sleepy.
super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
talent competition — a contest in which people compete by showcasing their talents, for example in singing, dancing, acrobatics, etc
telephone exchange — a telecommunications facility to which subscribers' telephones connect, that switches calls among subscribers or to other exchanges for further routing.
telephone receiver — a device, as in a telephone, that converts changes in an electric current into sound.
telephone sex line — a telephone line operated by a phone-sex worker that offers phone sex to paying customers
television company — a company that broadcasts programmes by television
temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
the encyclopedists — the writers of the French Encyclopedia (1751-72) edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, which contained the advanced ideas of the period
to all appearances — apparently
to be tickled pink — If you are tickled pink, you are extremely pleased about something.
to fall into place — If things fall into place, events happen naturally to produce a situation you want.
to learn the ropes — If you are learning the ropes, you are learning how a particular task or job is done.
to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
to pull a fast one — If you say that someone has pulled a fast one on you, you mean that they have cheated or tricked you.
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.
to spill the beans — If you spill the beans, you tell someone something that people have been trying to keep secret.
to take the plunge — If you take the plunge, you decide to do something that you consider difficult or risky.

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