17-letter words containing s, i, n, u, o
- point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- portuguese guinea — former name of Guinea-Bissau.
- positive eugenics — the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)
- post-resurrection — the act of rising from the dead.
- postural drainage — a therapy for clearing congested lungs by placing the patient in a position for drainage by gravity, often accompanied by percussion with hollowed hands.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- power supply unit — (hardware) (PSU) An electronic module that converts high voltage (110 or 240 VAC) alternating current mains electricity into smoothed direct current at the various differnt voltages required by the motherboard; internal peripheral devices, cheifly storage devices: hard disks, CD or DVD, floppy disks and external connections such as USB. A PSU needs a high enough power output rating to supply all the devices connected to it and should output as little as possible electrical noise, both on the output wires and as electromagnetic radiation. See also uninterruptable power supply.
- prescription drug — medication available only on doctor's instruction
- previous question — a move that a vote be taken at once on a main question, used especially as a means of cutting off further debate.
- prison population — all the people who are confined in prison
- production string — A production string is the series of pipes through which the oil or gas is brought up from the reservoir.
- production system — (programming) A production system consists of a collection of productions (rules), a working memory of facts and an algorithm, known as forward chaining, for producing new facts from old. A rule becomes eligible to "fire" when its conditions match some set of elements currently in working memory. A conflict resolution strategy determines which of several eligible rules (the conflict set) fires next. A condition is a list of symbols which represent constants, which must be matched exactly; variables which bind to the thing they match and "<> symbol" which matches a field not equal to symbol. Example production systems are OPS5, CLIPS, flex.
- production values — the quality of a media production (such as a film) in regards to elements such as colours, quality, style, etc
- professional foul — In football, if a player commits a professional foul, they deliberately do something which is against the rules in order to prevent another player from scoring a goal.
- prusso-danish war — a war of 1864 between Prussia and Denmark by which Denmark lost Schleswig-Holstein.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- pseudo-scientific — any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no scientific basis.
- psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
- psycholinguistics — the study of the relationship between language and the cognitive or behavioral characteristics of those who use it.
- public television — a type of noncommercial, usually educational, television programming funded by the government, grants, viewers, and corporations. Compare educational television.
- pull one's weight — the amount or quantity of heaviness or mass; amount a thing weighs.
- put the kibosh on — nonsense.
- pyroligneous acid — a yellowish, acidic, water-soluble liquid, containing about 10 percent acetic acid, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood: used for smoking meats.
- quantity discount — When you receive a quantity discount from a store or supplier, you pay less because you have bought a large quantity of goods. Also known as bulk buying discount.
- quantity surveyor — A quantity surveyor is a person who calculates the cost and amount of materials and workers needed for a job such as building a house or a road.
- queen of puddings — a pudding made of moist but firm breadcrumb and custard mixture topped with jam and meringue
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- reconstructionism — a 20th-century movement among U.S. Jews, founded by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, advocating that Judaism, being a culture and way of life as well as a religion, is in sum a religious civilization requiring constant adaptation to contemporary conditions so that Jews can identify more readily and meaningfully with the Jewish community.
- reconstructionist — an advocate or supporter of Reconstruction or Reconstructionism.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- redistributionist — a person who believes in, advocates, or supports income redistribution.
- reduce to silence — If someone or something reduces you to silence, they make you feel so upset or confused that you cannot speak.
- refuse collection — the collection of rubbish and waste, usually in a rubbish or refuse truck, before final disposal
- reported question — A reported question is a question which is reported using a clause beginning with a word such as 'why' or 'whether', as in 'I asked her why she'd done it'.
- rescue operations — operations or organized procedures to bring people or a person out of danger, attack, harm, etc
- resurrection fern — a drought-resistant, evergreen, epiphytic fern, Polypodium polypodioides, of subtropical to tropical America, appearing to be a ball of coiled, dead leaves in the dry season but reviving with moisture.
- revascularization — the restoration of the blood circulation of an organ or area, achieved by unblocking obstructed or disrupted blood vessels or by surgically implanting replacements.
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- ringer's solution — an aqueous solution of the chlorides of sodium, potassium, and calcium in the same concentrations as normal body fluids, used chiefly in the laboratory for sustaining tissue.
- rio grande do sul — a state in S Brazil. 107,923 sq. mi. (279,520 sq. km). Capital: Pôrto Alegre.
- road construction — the building of roads
- rocket propulsion — propulsion of an object by thrust developed by a rocket.
- royal institution — a British society founded in 1799 for the dissemination of scientific knowledge
- russian wolfhound — borzoi.
- safety precaution — a precaution that is taken in order to ensure that something is safe and not dangerous
- saint bonaventure — Saint ("the Seraphic Doctor") 1221–74, Italian scholastic theologian.
- samurai tradition — the body of customs, thought, practices, etc belonging to the samurai warrior caste of Japan