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17-letter words containing p, u, r, e, l

  • equal opportunity — policies that bar discrimination
  • feint-ruled paper — writing paper with light horizontal lines printed across at regular intervals
  • fluorescent strip — a fluorescent light in the form of a long strip
  • fourfold purchase — a tackle that is composed of a rope passed through two fourfold blocks in such a way as to provide mechanical power in the ratio of 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, depending on whether hauling is done on the running or the standing block and without considering friction. Compare tackle (def 2).
  • frequency polygon — a frequency curve consisting of connected line segments formed by joining the midpoints of the upper edges of the rectangles in a histogram whose class intervals are of uniform length.
  • full linear group — the group of all nonsingular linear transformations mapping a finite-dimensional vector space into itself.
  • gause's principle — the principle that similar species cannot coexist for long in the same ecological niche
  • grapefruit league — a series of training games played by major-league teams before the opening of the season (so named because they take place in the citrus-growing South, as in Florida).
  • graphic equalizer — an equalizer in an audio system that is controlled by sliders that show graphically and correct the frequency response within the preset frequency range.
  • gridiron pendulum — a clock pendulum having, as part of its shaft, an arrangement of brass and steel rods having different coefficients of expansion, such that the pendulum has the same length at any temperature.
  • henry of portugal — ("the Navigator") 1394–1460, prince of Portugal: sponsor of geographic explorations.
  • huygens principle — the principle that all points on a wave front of light are sources of secondary waves and that surfaces tangential to these waves define the position of the wave front at any point in time.
  • hydrogen sulphide — Chemistry
  • hyperintellectual — appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits.
  • iberian peninsula — Also called Iberian Peninsula. a peninsula in SW Europe, comprising Spain and Portugal.
  • ice-cream parlour — a place where people go to eat ice cream
  • illegal procedure — a penalty assessed against the offensive team for a technical rules violation, as in assuming an illegal formation.
  • impossible figure — a picture of an object that at first sight looks three-dimensional but cannot be a two-dimensional projection of a real three-dimensional object, for example a picture of a staircase that re-enters itself while appearing to ascend continuously
  • influence peddler — a person who arranges to obtain favors, as government contracts, from high officials on behalf of others for a fee.
  • insupportableness — The state of being insupportable; insufferableness.
  • interrupt handler — (software)   A routine which is executed when an interrupt occurs. Interrupt handlers typically deal with low-level events in the hardware of a computer system such as a character arriving at a serial port or a tick of a real-time clock. Special care is required when writing an interrupt handler to ensure that either the interrupt which triggered the handler's execution is masked out (inhibitted) until the handler exits, or the handler is re-entrant so that multiple concurrent invocations will not interfere with each other. If interrupts are masked then the handler must execute as quickly as possible so that important events are not missed. This is often arranged by splitting the processing associated with the event into "upper" and "lower" halves. The lower part is the interrupt handler which masks out further interrupts as required, checks that the appropriate event has occurred (this may be necessary if several events share the same interrupt), services the interrupt, e.g. by reading a character from a UART and writing it to a queue, and re-enabling interrupts. The upper half executes as part of a user process. It waits until the interrupt handler has run. Normally the operating system is responsible for reactivating a process which is waiting for some low-level event. It detects this by a shared flag or by inspecting a shared queue or by some other synchronisation mechanism. It is important that the upper and lower halves do not interfere if an interrupt occurs during the execution of upper half code. This is usually ensured by disabling interrupts during critical sections of code such as removing a character from a queue.
  • irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
  • jurisprudentially — In terms of jurisprudence.
  • karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
  • keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
  • l'hospital's rule — the theorem that for the quotient of two functions satisfying certain conditions on a given closed interval, each having infinite limit or zero as limit at a given point, the limit of the quotient at the given point is equal to the limit of the quotient of the derivatives of each function.
  • la perouse strait — a strait between S Sakhalin Island, Russia and N Hokkaido Island, Japan connecting the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. 25 miles (40 km) wide.
  • least upper bound — an upper bound that is less than or equal to all the upper bounds of a particular set. 3 is the least upper bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbr.: lub.
  • lighthouse keeper — a person who mans a lighthouse and makes sure that the light is working properly
  • ligurian republic — the republic in NW Italy set up by Napoleon in 1797, incorporated into France in 1805, and united with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.
  • liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
  • liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
  • lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
  • malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
  • manual typewriter — a keyboard machine, operated entirely by hand, for writing mechanically in characters resembling print
  • maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
  • medical procedure — A medical procedure is a medical treatment or operation.
  • mercuric sulphide — a compound of mercury, usually existing as a black solid (metacinnabarite) or a red solid (cinnabar or vermilion), which is used as a pigment. Formula: HgS
  • methylidyne group — the trivalent group ≡CH.
  • microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
  • multiple cropping — the use of the same field for two or more crops, whether of the same or of different kinds, successively during a single year.
  • multiple exposure — the filming of more than one scene in a single frame
  • multiple integral — an integral in which the integrand involves a function of more than one variable and which requires for evaluation repetition of the integration process.
  • multiple neuritis — polyneuritis.
  • multiple-unit car — a self-propelled railroad car, generally used in commuting service, equipped so that a train of such cars can be operated from any one of them.
  • multiplex printer — (hardware)   A duplex circuit using time-division multiplexing to provide multiple duplex channels over one wire. For example, channels A, B, C, and D could be used for simultaneous transmission in both directions.
  • multiplier effect — the effect of government spending on national income
  • muscle dysmorphia — a mental disorder primarily affecting males, characterized by obsessions about a perceived lack of muscularity, leading to compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, etc. Compare body dysmorphic disorder.
  • net present value — an assessment of the long-term profitability of a project made by adding together all the revenue it can be expected to achieve over its whole life and deducting all the costs involved, discounting both future costs and revenue at an appropriate rate
  • neuropathological — (medicine) Of, pertaining to, or arising from neuropathology, the pathology of nerve tissue.
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