18-letter words containing s, c, a, g
- postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
- pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
- programmer's cheer — (humour) "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" [Origin?]
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- psychopathological — the science or study of mental disorders.
- psychopharmacology — the branch of pharmacology dealing with the psychological effects of drugs.
- psychosociological — psychological and sociological
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
- rain cats and dogs — water that is condensed from the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere and falls to earth in drops more than 1/50 inch (0.5 mm) in diameter. Compare drizzle (def 6).
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- registered charity — official aid organization
- registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- resistance fighter — someone who fights (for freedom, etc) against an invader in an occupied country, or against their government, etc, often secretly or illegally
- resistance welding — welding utilizing pressure and heat that is generated in the pieces to be welded by resistance to an electric current.
- restraining circle — any of three circles on the floor of a basketball court used for jump balls: other players must remain outside the circle during a jump ball
- reverse the charge — to make a telephone call at the recipient's expense
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- sampling frequency — sample rate
- sampling statistic — any function of observed data, esp one used to estimate the corresponding parameter of the underlying distribution, such as the sample mean, sample variance, etc
- schengen agreement — an agreement, signed in 1985 at a meeting of European leaders near Schengen, Luxembourg, but not implemented until 1995, to gradually abolish border controls within Europe; it was supplemented in 1990 by the Schengen Convention; in 1999 the agreement was incorporated into European Union law. Twenty-six countries acceded by 2015; the UK is not a signatory
- school-leaving age — the minimum age that children are legally allowed to leave school - in Britain and the United States, this is 16
- scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
- seagate technology — (company) A major manufacturer of hard disk drives, founded in 1979 as "Shugart Technology" by Alan F. Shugart and Finis Conner. That name is on the original patents for the 5.25" hard disk drive. They changed the name to Seagate Technology soon after to avoid confusion, and also to avoid friction with Xerox, which had since purchased Alan's earlier company, Shugart Associates. Address: 920 Disc Drive, Scotts Valley, CA 95066, USA. Fax: +1 (408) 438 3320.
- secondary diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- secondary offering — the sale of a large block of outstanding stock off the floor of an exchange, usually by a major stockholder.
- secretarial agency — a recruiting business which deals with jobs for secretaries
- security agreement — business: contract
- self-deprecatingly — in a self-deprecating manner
- self-glorification — a glorified or more splendid form of something.
- self-gratification — the act of pleasing or satisfying oneself, especially the gratifying of one's own impulses, needs, or desires.
- self-incriminating — serving to incriminate oneself or to expose oneself to prosecution: self-incriminating testimony.
- self-tapping screw — a screw designed to tap its corresponding female thread as it is driven.
- shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
- shugart associates — (company) The disk drive company, founded by Alan F. Shugart, which developed SCSI. Alan left Shugart Associates in 1974 [did he quit or was he fired?]. Shugart Associates was bought, and eventually shut down by Xerox.
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- sign of the zodiac — one of the twelve constellations along the path of the ecliptic.
- significance level — (in the statistical test of a hypothesis) the maximum probability of a Type I error for all distributions consistent with the null hypothesis.
- significant symbol — a verbal or nonverbal gesture, as a word or smile, that has acquired a conventionalized meaning.
- skin friction drag — aerodynamic resistance or drag due to the contact of moving air with the surface of an airplane, a glider, etc.
- sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- social engineering — the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems.
- societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
- sociopsychological — of, relating to, or characterized by interrelated social and psychological factors.
- sociotechnological — of, relating to, or signifying the combination or interaction of social and technological factors.