20-letter words containing p, o, u, r
- continued proportion — geometric progression
- corpus juris civilis — the body of Roman or civil law consolidated by Justinian in the 6th century ad. It consists of four parts, the Institutes, Digest, Code, and Novels
- corruption of minors — the criminal offence of inducing people below the age of consent to engage in sexual activity
- council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
- counterproliferation — Action intended to prevent an increase or spread in the possession of nuclear weapons.
- cream of tomato soup — a creamy soup made from tomatoes
- cycloidal propulsion — propulsion of a vessel by propellers of controllable pitch that steer as well as propel.
- developing-out paper — a sensitized printing paper requiring development in order to bring out the image. Abbreviation: D.O.P.
- double-aspect theory — a monistic theory that holds that mind and body are not distinct substances but merely different aspects of a single substance
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- due process (of law) — the course of legal proceedings established by the legal system of a nation or state to protect individual rights
- education department — the department of a local authority that is concerned with education, or the government department concerned with education
- eight queens problem — eight queens puzzle
- electromagnetic pump — a device for pumping liquid metals by placing a pipe between the poles of an electromagnet and passing a current through the liquid metal
- equity of redemption — the right that a mortgager has in equity to redeem his property on payment of the sum owing, even though the sum is overdue
- european social fund — one of the four Structural Funds of the European Union which aims to support employment and the economic and social well-being of EU member countries
- factor of production — any instrument, agent, etc., employed in the production of goods and services.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- for sb's consumption — If you do or say something for a particular person's or group's consumption, you do or say it especially for them, although your private thoughts or plans may be very different.
- freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
- friar minor capuchin — capuchin (def 4).
- frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- group code recording — (storage) (GCR) A recording method used for 6250 BPI magnetic tapes. GCR typically uses a group of five bits of code to represent four bits of data. The encoding ensures no more than two or three zeros occur in a row, and no more than eight or so ones occur in a row, where zeros represent an absense of magnetic change. GCR is also used on Commodore Business Machines diskette drives; the 4040, 8050, 154x, 157x and 158x series of 5.25" and 3.5" low and high density diskette drives used with 8-bit home computers circa 1977 to 1992. It was also supported on Amiga internal and external drives but only used for reading non-Amiga disks. Compare NRZI, PE.
- group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
- group of twenty-four — a group of twenty-four rich and industrialized countries of the world, whose heads of government meet regularly to coordinate the position of developing countries on monetary and development issues
- group representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of interests rather than by geographical location.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- happy hunting ground — the North American Indian heaven, conceived of as a paradise of hunting and feasting for warriors and hunters.
- hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
- hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
- houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
- how are you keeping? — how are you?
- human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
- human papillomavirus — any of a group of papillomaviruses causing cutaneous warts and lesions of the oral, anal, and genital mucous membranes in human beings
- human parvovirus b19 — Pathology. a mild infection, most often seen in children or young adults, caused by a small virus ((the human parvovirus B19)) and marked by a blotchy rash on the cheeks, arms, and legs.
- hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- hypophosphorous acid — a colorless or yellowish, water-soluble, liquid, monobasic acid, H 3 PO 2 , having a sour odor, and used as a reducing agent.
- ideal of pure reason — God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
- ignotum per ignotius — an explanation that is obscurer than the thing to be explained
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in (or out of) play — in (or not in) the condition for continuing play
- in the lap of luxury — If you say that someone lives in the lap of luxury, you mean that they live in conditions of great comfort and wealth.
- industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
- instruction prefetch — (architecture) A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- jacopo della quercia — Jacopo Della [yah-kaw-paw del-lah] /ˈyɑ kɔ pɔ ˌdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), 1374?–1438, Italian sculptor.