20-letter words containing r, h, g
- officer of the guard — an officer, acting under the officer of the day, who is responsible for the instruction, discipline, and performance of duty of the guard in a post, camp, or station. Abbreviation: OG, O.G.
- on the drawing board — in the planning stage
- orthognathic surgery — the surgical correction of deformities or malpositions of the jaw.
- pan-american highway — a road system proposed in the 1920s linking nations of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Alaska to Santiago, Chile, with some gaps remaining in Panama and Colombia. The section between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Panama City is known as the Inter-American Highway Total length about 16,000 miles (25,744 km).
- paper chromatography — the separation of mixtures into their constituents by preferential adsorption by a solid, as a column of silica (column chromatography) or a strip of filter paper (paper chromatography) or by a gel.
- part way through sth — in the course of something; in the middle of something
- paternal grandfather — the father of someone's father
- paternal grandmother — the mother of someone's father
- pay through the nose — the part of the face or facial region in humans and certain animals that contains the nostrils and the organs of smell and functions as the usual passageway for air in respiration: in humans it is a prominence in the center of the face formed of bone and cartilage, serving also to modify or modulate the voice.
- peremptory challenge — a formal objection to the service of a juror by a party to a criminal prosecution or a civil action that requires no showing of cause.
- perpendicular gothic — the style of Gothic architecture in England during the 14th and 15th centuries, characterized by tracery having vertical lines, a four-centred arch, and fan vaulting
- philoprogenitiveness — producing offspring, especially abundantly; prolific.
- photogelatin process — collotype (def 1).
- phthalocyanine green — a pigment used in painting, derived from chlorinated copper phthalocyanine and characterized chiefly by its intense green color and permanence.
- physical meteorology — the branch of meteorology dealing with the study of optical, electrical, acoustical, and thermodynamic phenomena in the atmosphere, including the physics of clouds and precipitation.
- poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
- portrait photography — the activity or art of taking portrait photos
- posted write-through — A cache with a posted write-through policy (e.g. Intel 80386) delays the write-back to main memory until the bus is not in use.
- poza rica de hidalgo — a city in N Veracruz, in E Mexico.
- pride of the morning — light mist or precipitation observed at sea in the morning and regarded as indicating a fine day.
- proof of the pudding — the true value or quality of something, as seen when it is experienced, tried, or put to use: The proof of the pudding for a business is what customers say about it.
- psychometric testing — the use of psychometric tests, often as a selection method
- public lending right — (in Britain) an act of Parliament that directs compensation to an author for the library loan of his or her book.
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
- pythagoras's theorem — (mathematics) The theorem of geometry, named after Pythagoras, of Samos, Ionia, stating that, for a right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides. I.e. if the longest side has length A and the other sides have lengths B and C (in any units), A^2 = B^2 + C^2 (2004-02-12)
- quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
- quantum cryptography — a method of coding information based on quantum mechanics, which is said to be unbreakable
- quarantine anchorage — an anchorage for ships awaiting a pratique.
- quick on the trigger — quick to fire a gun
- 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.
- 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.
- ring-necked pheasant — a gallinaceous Asian bird, Phasianus colchicus, having a white band around its neck, introduced into Great Britain, North America, and the Hawaiian Islands.
- ringing off the hook — If your phone is ringing off the hook, so many people are trying to telephone you that it is ringing constantly.
- rough-legged buzzard — a buzzard, Buteo lagopus, of Europe, Asia, and North America, having feathers covering its legs
- rough-winged swallow — either of two New World swallows of the genus Stelgidopteryx, having outer primary feathers with small barblike hooks on the margins.
- royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces
- rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
- sarcastic fringehead — any fish of the genus Neoclinus, characterized by a row of fleshy processes on the head, as N. blanchardi (sarcastic fringehead) of California coastal waters.
- satellite photograph — a photograph taken by an artificial satellite from space
- scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
- scavenger's daughter — an instrument of torture that doubled over and squeezed the body so strongly and violently that blood was brought forth from the ears and nose: invented in 16th-century England.
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- serve a person right — to pay a person back, esp for wrongful or foolish treatment or behaviour
- set the ball rolling — to open or initiate (an action, discussion, movement, etc)
- sex change operation — a surgical operation designed to change a person's physical sexual characteristics to those of the opposite sex
- short message system — A short message system is a way of sending short written messages from one mobile phone to another. The abbreviation SMS is also used.
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- slip through the net — If criminals slip through the net, they avoid being caught by the system or trap that was meant to catch them.
- software methodology — (programming) The study of how to navigate through each phase of the software process model (determining data, control, or uses hierarchies, partitioning functions, and allocating requirements) and how to represent phase products (structure charts, stimulus-response threads, and state transition diagrams).