20-letter words containing r, e, n, u
- prosecuting attorney — the public officer in a county, district, or other jurisdiction charged with carrying on the prosecution in criminal proceedings.
- pseudoparenchymatous — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
- public lending right — (in Britain) an act of Parliament that directs compensation to an author for the library loan of his or her book.
- pull (one's) rank on — to take advantage of one's military rank in enforcing commands or one's high position or seniority in making demands on (a subordinate)
- put in an appearance — the act or fact of appearing, as to the eye or mind or before the public: the unannounced appearance of dinner guests; the last appearance of Caruso in Aïda; her first appearance at a stockholders' meeting.
- put the hard word on — to ask or demand something from
- pyrenees-atlantiques — a department in SW France. 2978 sq. mi. (7710 sq. km). Capital: Pau.
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
- quadrantal corrector — either of two soft-iron spheres attached to each side of a binnacle, intended to correct the compass deviation (quadrantal deviation) resulting from magnetism from ferrous metal in a ship.
- quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
- quantum field theory — any theory in which fields are treated by the methods of quantum mechanics; each field can then be regarded as consisting of particles of a particular kind, which may be created and annihilated.
- quarantine anchorage — an anchorage for ships awaiting a pratique.
- quaternary structure — the basic structural relationship of the components of a polypeptide, specifically, the type, number, and sequence of amino acids and nucleotides in the chain.
- queen of the prairie — a tall plant, Filipendula rubra, of the rose family, having branching clusters of pink flowers, growing in meadows and prairies.
- queen's remembrancer — (in Great Britain) a judiciary official who collects debts owed to the king.
- queensland arrowroot — a South American and West Indian herb, Canna edulis, having large sheathing leaves, red flowers, and edible rhizomes.
- quick on the trigger — quick to fire a gun
- rachel louise carson — Christopher ("Kit") 1809–68, U.S. frontiersman and scout.
- raynaud's phenomenon — a secondary circulatory disorder, often associated with a primary vascular disease, characterized by changes of blood flow resulting in white, bluish, or red hands and feet
- receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
- reciprocal insurance — insurance in which members of a reciprocal exchange, acting through an attorney-in-fact, insure themselves and each other.
- reconcile an account — If you reconcile an account, you compare the items in a bank statement, credit card statement, or vendor statement with the entries on your books and make sure that the statement and books match.
- recuperative furnace — a furnace having its incoming air heated by exhaust gases, the passage of air and gases through the furnace being always in the same direction.
- recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
- recursive subroutine — a subroutine that can call itself as part of its execution
- redundancy agreement — an agreement over the sum of money given by an employer to an employee who has been made redundant
- refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
- regenerative furnace — a furnace in which the incoming air is heated by regenerators.
- relative conjunction — a conjunction that introduces a relative clause
- repurchase agreement — a contract between a dealer, as a bank, and an investor, whereby the investor purchases securities with the promise that they will be bought back by the dealer on a designated date, for which the investor receives a fixed return.
- request for comments — (standard) (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
- requiescat (in pace) — may he or she rest (in peace)
- réseaux ip européens — (RIPE) A collaboration between European networks which use the TCP/IP protocol suite to provide Internet services.
- respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
- retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
- return from the dead — (jargon) To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of no account.
- return of the native — a novel (1878) by Thomas Hardy.
- return on investment — the amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested. Abbreviation: ROI.
- return on net assets — the amount of profit computed by dividing net income before interest and taxes by the cost of net assets, usually expressed as a percentage. Abbreviation: RONA.
- reversionary annuity — an annuity payable to a beneficiary during the period of time he or she survives the insured.
- ring of the nibelung — Richard Wagner's tetralogy of music dramas: Das Rheingold (completed 1869), Die Walküre (completed 1870), Siegfried (completed 1876), and Götterdämmerung (completed 1876): the cycle was first performed at Bayreuth, 1876.
- rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
- roller-blind shutter — curtain shutter.
- rotations per minute — revolutions per minute
- rough-winged swallow — either of two New World swallows of the genus Stelgidopteryx, having outer primary feathers with small barblike hooks on the margins.
- rub sb's nose in sth — To rub someone's nose in something that they do not want to think about, such as a failing or a mistake they have made, means to remind them repeatedly about it.
- rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
- ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
- run off at the mouth — Anatomy, Zoology. the opening through which an animal or human takes in food. the cavity containing the structures used in mastication. the structures enclosing or being within this cavity, considered as a whole.
- run-time environment — (operating system) A collection of subroutines and environment variables that provide commonly used functions and data for a program while it is running. Compare run-time support.