24-letter words containing r, e, c, l
- psychopathic personality — an antisocial personality characterized by the failure to develop any sense of moral responsibility and the capability of performing violent or antisocial acts
- public international law — Also called public law. the law governing the legal relations between independent states or nations and, increasingly, between these and individuals.
- public relations officer — a person who is responsible for communications with the public
- pure functional language — purely functional language
- quadrature of the circle — the insoluble problem of constructing, by the methods of Euclidean geometry, a square equal in area to a given circle.
- quick-assembly furniture — furniture such as shelves and cupboards which you buy as a number of separate pieces and assemble yourself
- quinacrine hydrochloride — Atabrine
- reciprocal translocation — an exchange of segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes.
- recommended retail price — the selling price of a product officially suggested by a manufacturer to a retailer
- reconnaissance satellite — a military satellite designed to carry out photographic surveillance, gather electronic intelligence, detect nuclear explosions, or provide early warning of strategic-missile launchings.
- referential transparency — (programming) An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchanged without changing the value of E. This is not the case if the value of an expression depends on global state which can change value. The most common example of changing global state is assignment to a global variable. For example, if y is a global variable in: f(x) { return x+y; } g(z) { a = f(1); y = y + z; return a + f(1); } function g has the "side-effect" that it alters the value of y. Since f's result depends on y, the two calls to f(1) will return different results even though the argument is the same. Thus f is not referentially transparent. Changing the order of evaluation of the statements in g will change its result. We could make f above referentially transparent by passing in y as an argument: f(x, y) = x+y Similarly, g would need to take y as an argument and return its new value as part of the result: g(z, y) { a = f(1, y); y' = y+z; return (a + f(1, y'), y'); } Referentially transparent programs are more amenable to formal methods and easier to reason about because the meaning of an expression depends only on the meaning of its subexpressions and not on the order of evaluation or side-effects of other expressions. We can stretch the concept of referential transparency to include input and output if we consider the whole program to be a function from its input to its output. The program as a whole is referentially transparent because it will always produce the same output when given the same input. This is stretching the concept because the program's input may include what the user types, the content of certain files or even the time of day. If we do not consider global state like the contents of files as input, then writing to a file and reading what was written behaves just like assignment to a global variable. However, if we must consider the state of the universe as an input rather than global state then any deterministic system would be referentially transparent! See also extensional equality, observational equivalence.
- regular checking account — a checking account for which the monthly fee is usually based on the average balance maintained and the number of transactions recorded.
- relative record data set — (database) (RRDS) One of the access methods used by IBM's VSAM.
- renewable term insurance — Renewable term insurance is term life insurance that may be renewed for another period without the policyholder needing to provide further evidence of their insurability.
- republic of south africa — Republic of, a country in S Africa; member of the Commonwealth of Nations until 1961. 472,000 sq. mi. (1,222,480 sq. km). Capitals: Pretoria and Cape Town.
- resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
- research and development — the part of a commercial company's activity concerned with applying the results of scientific research to develop new products and improve existing ones
- responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
- revolving charge account — a charge plan offerring revolving credit.
- richard the lion-hearted — ("Richard the Lion-Hearted"; "Richard Coeur de Lion") 1157–99, king of England 1189–99.
- robot exclusion standard — standard for robot exclusion
- rock back on one's heels — to astonish or be astonished
- rose-coloured spectacles — If you look at a person or situation through rose-coloured glasses or rose-tinted glasses, you see only their good points and therefore your view of them is unrealistic. In British English, you can also say that someone is looking through rose-coloured spectacles.
- santa coloma de gramanet — a city in NE Spain.
- scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web) A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
- second earl of shelburne — William Petty Fitzmaurice, 2nd Earl of, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, William Petty Fizmaurice Lansdowne.
- secondary school teacher — a person who teaches at a secondary school
- selective service system — the U.S. federal agency that facilitates the mobilization of military forces by requiring the registration of males between the ages of 18 and 26 years. Abbreviation: SSS.
- self-fulfilling prophecy — a prophecy that comes true because of the expectation that it will
- serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
- show one's (true) colors — to reveal one's true self
- single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
- single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
- skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
- slop oil recovery system — A slop oil recovery system is a method and the equipment used for cleaning and disposing of mixtures of oil, chemicals, and water from various sources in a refinery or oilfield.
- socialist workers' party — one of the biggest extreme left wing parties in Britain
- south equatorial current — an ocean current, flowing westward, found near the equator in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
- southern cornstalk borer — the larva of a grass moth, Diatraea crambidoides, occurring in the southeastern U.S. from Maryland to Georgia, that is sometimes a serious pest, especially of corn.
- special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
- succinylcholine chloride — a crystalline compound, C 1 4 H 3 0 Cl 2 N 2 O 4 , used as a skeletal muscle relaxant in surgical procedures.
- sulphur-crested cockatoo — a large Australian white parrot, Kakatoe galerita, with a yellow erectile crest
- teacher training college — a higher-education college that specializes in teacher training
- telephony user interface — (communications) (TUI) Either a software interface to telephony (e.g. a phone-capable PC) or a DTMF-based interface to software (e.g. voicemail).
- telescope user interface — (hardware, interface) (TUI) A remote control interface for a telescope.
- the official secrets act — an act of Parliament that covers the protection of information relating to state security
- the second international — an international association of socialist parties and trade unions that began in Paris in 1889 and collapsed during World War I. The right-wing elements reassembled at Berne in 1919
- three-spined stickleback — a small teleost fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, of the family Gasterosteidae, of rivers and coastal regions, having three spines along the back and occurring in cold and temperate northern regions
- to cramp someone's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behaviour in some way.
- to light the touch paper — if someone lights the touch paper or lights the blue touch paper, they do something which causes anger or excitement
- to rise to the challenge — If someone rises to the challenge, they act in response to a difficult situation which is new to them and are successful.