19-letter words containing s, e, c, t
- up to one's neck in — deeply involved in
- upset the applecart — a pushcart used by a vendor of apples.
- use the source luke — (humour, programming) (UTSL) (A pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in "Star Wars") A more polite version of RTFS. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven't attracted wizards to answer them. Once upon a time in Elder Days, everyone running Unix had source. After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a Unix source licence. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code (made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern. Nowadays, free Unix clones are becoming common enough that almost anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is probably Linux. FreeBSD, NetBSD, 386BSD, jolix also have their followers. Cheap commercial Unix implementations with source such as BSD/OS from BSDI are accelerating this trend.
- vaginal intercourse — intercourse involving insertion of the penis into the vagina
- vertical stabilizer — the fixed vertical surface of an aircraft empennage, to which the rudder is hinged.
- vesicular exanthema — an infectious viral disease of swine, characterized by blisters on the snout, mucous membranes, and feet.
- viatical settlement — the purchase by a charity of a life assurance policy owned by a person with only a short time to live, to enable that person to use the proceeds during his or her lifetime
- vicariate apostolic — a district under the jurisdiction of a vicar apostolic.
- volumetric analysis — determination of the concentration, by volume, of a substance in a solution, as by titration.
- wassermann reaction — a diagnostic test for syphilis using the fixation of a complement by the serum of a syphilitic individual.
- waste heat recovery — the use of heat that is produced in a thermodynamic cycle, as in a furnace, combustion engine, etc, in another process, such as heating feedwater or air
- watch night service — a service held on the night of December 24, or of December 31
- websters-dictionary — Informal. a dictionary of the English language, especially American English, such as Dictionary.com.
- what makes one tick — a slight, sharp, recurring click, tap, or beat, as of a clock.
- white-winged scoter — a blackish North American duck, Melanitta deglandi, having a white patch on each wing.
- xt bus architecture — (hardware, architecture) (After the IBM PC XT) An eight-bit ISA bus architecture used by Intel 8086 and Intel 8088 systems in the IBM PC and IBM PC XT in the 1980s. It predates the 16-bit ISA architecture used on the Intel 80286 based machines. The XT bus has four DMA channels, of which three are brought out to the expansion slots. Of these three, two are normally allocated to machine functions: DMA channel Expansion Standard function 0 No {dynamic RAM} refresh 1 Yes add-on cards 2 Yes {floppy disk} controller 3 Yes {hard disc} controller (1997-09-15)
- young conservatives — the youth section of the United Kingdom Conservative Party until 1998
- zero-hours contract — an employment contract which does not oblige the employer to provide regular work for the employee, but requires the employee to be on call in the event that work becomes available