21-letter words containing r, a, k
- stock list department — (in an American stock exchange) the department dealing with monitoring compliance with its listing requirements and rules
- stokes-adams syndrome — unconsciousness accompanying atrioventricular heart block, sometimes characterized by weakness, irregular pulse, and intermittent convulsive or nonconvulsive seizures.
- take one's finger out — stop delaying or procrastinating
- take sb at their word — If you take someone at their word, you believe what they say, when they did not really mean it or when they meant something slightly different.
- take sb/sth seriously — If you take someone or something seriously, you believe that they are important and deserve attention.
- take someone prisoner — to capture and hold someone as a prisoner, esp as a prisoner of war
- take under advisement — to consider carefully
- tartarian honeysuckle — an Asian honeysuckle, Lonicera tatarica, having fragrant, white to pink flowers.
- tenure track position — a position or office that carries with it the opportunity to eventually obtain tenure or the right to permanent employment
- the break of day/dawn — The break of day or the break of dawn is the time when it begins to grow light after the night.
- the corncracker state — a nickname for the state of Kentucky
- the fast track to sth — the quickest or most direct route or system
- the flickertail state — a name for the state of North Dakota
- the joker in the pack — If you describe someone or something as the joker in the pack, you mean that they are different from the other people or things in their group, and can be unpredictable.
- the rock of gibraltar — a limestone promontory at the tip of S Spain
- the yellow brick road — the road to success or happiness (in the film the Wizard of Oz the yellow brick road leads to Oz)
- ticker-tape reception — (mainly in New York) the showering of the motorcade of a distinguished politician, visiting head of state, etc, with ticker tape as a sign of welcome
- to be hard luck on sb — to be unfortunate or unlucky for someone
- to kill a mockingbird — a novel (1960) by Harper Lee.
- to look the other way — If you say that someone looks the other way, you are critical of them because they pay no attention to something unpleasant that is happening, when they should be dealing with it properly.
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- to sink without trace — If you say that someone or something sinks without trace or sinks without a trace, you mean that they stop existing or stop being successful very suddenly and completely.
- to take the high road — to take the course of action which is safest and most familiar
- to take your mind off — If something takes your mind off a problem or unpleasant situation, it helps you to forget about it for a while.
- trans-alaska pipeline — a pipeline system opened in 1977 that transports oil 800 miles (1300 km) across Alaska, from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope S to Valdez harbor.
- trustee in bankruptcy — a person appointed by a court to administer the property of a bankrupt.
- uk overseas territory — any of the territories that are governed by the UK but lie outside the British Isles; many were formerly British crown colonies: includes Bermuda, Falkland Islands, and Montserrat
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
- vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.
- weak head normal form — (reduction, theory) (WHNF) A lambda expression is in weak head normal form (WHNF) if it is a head normal form (HNF) or any lambda abstraction. I.e. the top level is not a redex. The term was coined by Simon Peyton Jones to make explicit the difference between head normal form (HNF) and what graph reduction systems produce in practice. A lambda abstraction with a reducible body, e.g. \ x . ((\ y . y+x) 2) is in WHNF but not HNF. To reduce this expression to HNF would require reduction of the lambda body: (\ y . y+x) 2 --> 2+x Reduction to WHNF avoids the name capture problem with its need for alpha conversion of an inner lambda abstraction and so is preferred in practical graph reduction systems. The same principle is often used in strict languages such as Scheme to provide call-by-name evaluation by wrapping an expression in a lambda abstraction with no arguments: D = delay E = \ () . E The value of the expression is obtained by applying it to the empty argument list:
- whistling in the dark — If you say that someone is whistling in the dark, you mean that they are trying to remain brave and convince themselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems.
- white-knuckle paddler — an inexpert and timid canoeist.
- workers' compensation — a government-sponsored insurance system, funded by contributions from employers, for compensating employees for injury or occupational disease suffered in connection with their employment