20-letter words containing r, o, s, a, l
- psychiatric hospital — institution treating mental disorders
- public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
- 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)
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
- quasi-stellar object — quasar. Abbreviation: QSO.
- queensland arrowroot — a South American and West Indian herb, Canna edulis, having large sheathing leaves, red flowers, and edible rhizomes.
- rachel louise carson — Christopher ("Kit") 1809–68, U.S. frontiersman and scout.
- raise one's glass to — to drink the health of; drink a toast to
- real-time processing — data-processing by a computer which receives constantly changing data, such as information relating to air-traffic control, travel booking systems, etc, and processes it sufficiently rapidly to be able to control the source of the data
- 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.
- refracting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
- refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
- relative atomic mass — the ratio of the average mass per atom of the naturally occurring form of an element to one-twelfth the mass of an atom of carbon-12
- republic of maldives — a republic occupying an archipelago of 1087 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka: came under British protection in 1887; became independent in 1965 and a republic in 1968; member of the Commonwealth (1982–2016). The economy and infrastructure were severely damaged in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Official language: Divehi. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: rufiyaa. Capital: Malé. Pop: 393 988 (2013 est). Area: 298 sq km (115 sq miles)
- request for proposal — (programming) (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
- rose-colored glasses — a cheerful or optimistic view of things, usually without valid basis: He saw life through rose-colored glasses.
- 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 air force list — an official list of all serving commissioned officers of the RAF and reserve officers liable for recall
- royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces
- royal leamington spa — a city in Warwickshire, central England: health resort.
- sailor's breastplate — a knot consisting of three overlapping loops formed by a single rope passed alternately over and under itself at crossings.
- satellite chromosome — a type of densely staining chromosome of uncertain biological function, found in many plant and animal species.
- satellite photograph — a photograph taken by an artificial satellite from space
- schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
- scream bloody murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
- season ticket holder — a person who has a season ticket
- second earl of essex — 2nd Earl of, Devereux, Robert.
- second international — an international association formed in 1889 in Paris, uniting socialistic groups or parties of various countries and holding international congresses from time to time: in 1923 it joined with the Vienna International to form the Labor and Socialist International. Compare international (def 6).
- secure sockets layer — (networking, security) (SSL) A protocol designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide secure communications over the Internet using asymmetric key encryption. SSL is layered beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, Gopher and NNTP and is layered above the connection protocol TCP/IP. It is used by the HTTPS access method.
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- separation allowance — an allowance paid to a member of the military when they are forced to be apart from their family due to their military duties
- server message block — (protocol) (SMB) A client/server protocol that provides file and printer sharing between computers. In addition SMB can share serial ports and communications abstractions such as named pipes and mail slots. SMB is similar to remote procedure call (RPC) specialised for file system access. SMB was developed by Intel, Microsoft, and IBM in the early 1980s. It has also had input from Xerox and 3Com. It is the native method of file and print sharing for Microsoft operating systems; where it is called Microsoft Networking. Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT all include SMB clients and servers. SMB is also used by OS/2, Lan Manager and Banyan Vines. There are SMB servers and clients for Unix, for example Samba and smbclient. SMB is a presentation layer protocol structured as a large set of commands (Server Message Blocks). There are commands to support file sharing, printer sharing, user authentication, resource browsing, and other miscellaneous functions. As clients and servers may implement different versions ("dialects") of the protocol they negotiate before starting a session. The redirector packages SMB requests into a network control block (NBC) structure that can be sent across the network to a remote device. SMB originally ran on top of the lower level protocols NetBEUI and NetBIOS, but now typically runs over TCP/IP. Microsoft have developed an extended version of SMB for the Internet, the Common Internet File System (CIFS), which in most cases replaces SMB. CIFS runs only runs over TCP/IP.
- set the ball rolling — to open or initiate (an action, discussion, movement, etc)
- shareholders' equity — Shareholders' equity is the total amount of ownership investment in a company.
- sharp-tailed sparrow — a sparrow, Ammospiza caudacuta, inhabiting salt marshes in North America, having narrow, sharply pointed tail feathers.
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- silicon tetrahydride — silane (def 1).
- skull and crossbones — a representation of a front view of a human skull above two crossed bones, originally used on pirates' flags and now used as a warning sign, as in designating substances as poisons.
- small craft advisory — a U.S. National Weather Service advisory of sustained winds, over coastal and inland waters, with speeds of 20–33 knots (23–38 mph, 10–17 m/sec). Regional NWS offices have discretion over the choice of the lower limit.
- snowflake generation — the generation of people who became adults in the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations
- snows of kilimanjaro — a short story (1936) by Ernest Hemingway.
- social security card — a card that contains details of a person's social security number
- sodium fluoroacetate — a white, amorphous, water-soluble, poisonous powder, C 2 H 2 FO 2 Na, used as a rodenticide.
- 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).
- solitary confinement — the confinement of a prisoner in a cell or other place in which he or she is completely isolated from others.
- south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
- south orkney islands — an uninhabited group of islands in the S Atlantic, southeast of Cape Horn: formerly a dependency of the Falkland Islands; part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962 (claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty). Area: 621 sq km (240 sq miles)
- southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
- spanish oyster plant — a composite plant, Scolymus hispanicus, of southern Europe, having spiny, thistlelike leaf margins, small yellow flowers, and an edible root.