20-letter words containing p, r, o, s, c, e
- south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
- special boat service — a unit of the Royal Marines specializing in reconnaissance and sabotage
- special patrol group — a former police unit tasked with counter terrorism in the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- special relationship — the exceptionally close political, diplomatic, cultural and historical relations between the United States and the United Kingdom
- specific performance — (especially in the sale of land) literal compliance with one's contractual promises pursuant to a judicial mandate.
- spectrophotoelectric — pertaining to the relationship between the wavelength of the incident radiation and the number of electrons released by a photoelectric substance.
- spectroscopic binary — a binary star having components that are not sufficiently separated to be resolved by a telescope, known to be a binary only bythe variations in wavelength of emitted light that are detected by a spectroscope.
- spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
- spherical coordinate — Usually, spherical coordinates. any of three coordinates used to locate a point in space by the length of its radius vector and the angles this vector makes with two perpendicular polar planes.
- spiral of archimedes — a curve that is the locus of a point that moves outward with uniform speed along a vector, beginning at the origin, while the vector rotates about the origin with uniform angular velocity. Equation (in polar coordinates): r = aθ.
- spontaneous recovery — the reappearance of a response after its extinction has been followed by a period of rest
- spotted crane's-bill — the American wild geranium, Geranium maculatum.
- step into the breach — If you step into the breach, you do a job or task which someone else was supposed to do or has done in the past, because they are suddenly unable to do it.
- string correspondent — stringer (def 6).
- subscription edition — an edition of one or more volumes for which a number of prospective purchasers place orders, usually in advance of publication.
- superior conjunction — the alignment of an inferior planet and the sun in which the planet is at the far side of the sun from the earth.
- supersonic transport — a commercial jet airplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound. Abbreviation: SST.
- switchboard operator — a person who operates an installation in a telephone exchange, office, hotel, etc, at which the interconnection of telephone lines is manually controlled
- synoptic meteorology — a branch of meteorology analyzing data collected simultaneously over a wide region, for the purpose of weather forecasting.
- telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
- the price of someone — what someone deserves, esp a fitting punishment
- the thinking process — thought; the activity of thinking
- to disturb the peace — If someone is accused of disturbing the peace, they are accused of behaving in a noisy and offensive way in public.
- to line your pockets — If you say that someone is lining their own or someone else's pockets, you disapprove of them because they are making money dishonestly or unfairly.
- to pull your punches — If you say that someone does not pull their punches when they are criticizing a person or thing, you mean that they say exactly what they think, even though this might upset or offend people.
- to scrape the barrel — If you say that someone is scraping the barrel, or scraping the bottom of the barrel, you disapprove of the fact that they are using or doing something of extremely poor quality.
- transposed conjugate — adjoint (def 2).
- transposition cipher — a cipher that rearranges the letters of the plain text in a different sequence.
- tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
- tropospheric scatter — transmission of radio frequency signals that have been scattered from irregularities in the troposphere to locations hundreds of kilometers distant.
- trumpet call for sth — a signal for something
- under the microscope — If you say that something is under the microscope, you mean that it is being studied very closely, usually because it is believed that something is wrong with it.
- video graphics array — (hardware) (VGA) A display standard for IBM PCs, with 640 x 480 pixels in 16 colours and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is also a text mode with 720 x 400 pixels. IBM technical references define the *product name* of their original VGA display board as "Video Graphics Array", in contrast to the preceding boards, the "Color Graphics Adapter" (CGA) and "Enhanced Graphics Adapter" (EGA). See also Super Video Graphics Adapter.
- winter olympic games — an international contest of winter sports, esp skiing, held every four years