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18-letter words containing s, i, n, t, r

  • presuppositionless — to suppose or assume beforehand; take for granted in advance.
  • prime-ministership — the principal minister and head of government in parliamentary systems; chief of the cabinet or ministry: the British prime minister.
  • primus inter pares — (of males) first among equals.
  • priority inversion — (parallel)   The state of a concurrent system where a high priority task is waiting for a low priority task which is waiting for a medium priority task. The system may become unstable and crash under these circumstances. In an operating system that uses multiple tasks, each task (or context) may be given a priority. These priorities help the scheduler decide which task to run next. Consider tasks, L, M, and H, with priorities Low, Medium, and High. M is running and H is blocked waiting for some resource that is held by L. So long as any task with a priority higher than L is runable, it will prevent task L, and thus task H, from running. Priority inversion is generally considered either as a high-level design failure or an implementation issue to be taken into account depending on who is talking. Most operating systems have methods in place to prevent or take inversion into account. Priority inheritance is one method. The most public instance of priority inversion is the repeated 'fail-safe' rebooting of the Mars Pathfinder. base station ('Sagan Memorial Station').
  • prison authorities — the people in charge of running a prison
  • prison rustic work — rustication having a deeply pitted surface.
  • private enterprise — free enterprise (def 1).
  • process identifier — (operating system)   (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
  • processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • 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.
  • productivity bonus — an extra payment made to workers for being more productive or yielding more favourable results than normal
  • property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
  • protease inhibitor — a drug that inhibits the action of protease, especially any of a class of antiviral drugs that prevent the cleavage and replication of HIV proteins.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
  • pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
  • puss in the corner — a parlor game for children in which one player in the middle of a room tries to occupy any of the positions along the walls that become vacant as other players dash across to exchange places at a signal.
  • put one's shirt on — to bet all one has on (a horse, etc)
  • pyramus and thisbe — (in Greek legend) two lovers of Babylon: Pyramus, wrongly supposing Thisbe to be dead, killed himself and she, encountering him in his death throes, did the same
  • qattara depression — a desert basin in the Libyan Desert, in NW Egypt: lowest point is 435 feet (133 meters) below sea level. 6950 sq. mi. (18,000 sq. km).
  • quantity surveying — the action or profession of a person who estimates the cost of the materials and labour necessary for a construction job
  • queen's university — A Canadian University. Source of GVL, NIAL, Pasqual, Q'NIAL and TXL.
  • quinacrine mustard — a nitrogen mustard derived from mepacrine and used as a stain for chromosomes
  • rabbit's-foot fern — hare's-foot fern.
  • racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
  • radiation exposure — exposure to radiant energy or to the particles emitted in the transfer of radiant energy, esp the particles and gamma rays emitted in nuclear decay; exposure to radioactive substances
  • radiation pressure — the pressure exerted on a surface by electromagnetic radiation or by sound waves.
  • radiation sickness — sickness caused by irradiation with x-rays or other nuclear radiation as a result of therapeutic treatment, accidental exposure, or a nuclear bomb explosion and characterized by nausea, vomiting, headache, cramps, diarrhea, loss of hair and teeth, destruction of white blood cells, and prolonged hemorrhage.
  • radius of gyration — the distance from an axis at which the mass of a body may be assumed to be concentrated and at which the moment of inertia will be equal to the moment of inertia of the actual mass about the axis, equal to the square root of the quotient of the moment of inertia and the mass.
  • rail rapid transit — a system of rail transit within an urban area that has exclusive right of way either below, above, or on the ground and so is capable of relatively high operating speed. Abbreviation: RRT.
  • 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).
  • range of stability — the angle to the perpendicular through which a vessel may be heeled without losing the ability to right itself.
  • rape crisis centre — a place that provides support to people who have been victims of rape or other kinds of sexual abuse
  • recess appointment — a person appointed to an office by the President of the United States without approval from the Senate because the Senate is in recess
  • recursive function — a function defined in terms of the repeated application of a number of simpler functions to their own values, by specifying a base clause and a recursion formula
  • reduction division — the first division of meiosis in which the number of chromosomes is reduced to half the original number.
  • 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
  • reflection density — a measure of the extent to which a surface reflects light or other electromagnetic radiation, equal to the logarithm to base ten of the reciprocal of the reflectance
  • regional enteritis — Crohn's disease.
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
  • regression testing — (programming)   Part of the test phase of software development where, as new modules are integrated into the system and the added functionality is tested, previously tested functionality is re-tested to assure that no new module has corrupted the system.
  • reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
  • reinsurance treaty — A reinsurance treaty is a contract that defines the terms of reinsurance business.
  • remains to be seen — If you say that it remains to be seen whether something will happen, you mean that nobody knows whether it will happen.
  • remanent magnetism — magnetization in minerals induced by a former magnetic field and persisting after the field changes.
  • renter's insurance — Renter's insurance is insurance for renters to insure their property against loss.
  • representativeness — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
  • rescind a contract — If an insurer rescinds an insurance contract, it terminates it because facts have been concealed or misrepresented by the proposer.
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