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18-letter words containing s, o, v, e, r, i

  • prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
  • preservation order — In Britain, a preservation order is an official order that makes it illegal for anyone to alter or destroy something such as an old building or an area of countryside.
  • 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').
  • progressive coding — (graphics, file format, algorithm)   (Or "interlacing") An aspect of a graphics storage format or transmission algorithm that treats bitmap image data non-sequentially in such a way that later data adds progressively greater resolution to an already full-size image. This contrasts with sequential coding. Progressive coding is useful when an image is being sent across a slow communications channel, such as the Internet, as the low-resolution image may be sufficient to allow the user to decide not to wait for the rest of the file to be received. In an interlaced GIF89 image, the pixels in a row are stored sequentially but the rows are stored in interlaced order, e.g. 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 6, 8, 10, 14, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Each vertical scan adds rows in the middle of the gaps left by the previous one. Interlacing is also supported by other formats. JPEG supports a functionally similar concept known as Progressive JPEG. [How does the algorithm differ?] See also progressive/sequential coding.
  • progressive dinner — a dinner party in which each successive course is prepared and eaten at the residence of a different participant.
  • protective custody — detention of a person by the police solely as protection against a possible attack or reprisal by someone.
  • provascular tissue — procambium.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • quality of service — (communications, networking)   (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
  • radioactive series — a succession of elements initiated in the radioactive decay of a parent, as thorium or uranium, each of which decays into the next until a stable element, usually lead, is produced.
  • 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.
  • reversionary bonus — a bonus added to the sum payable on death or at the maturity of a with-profits assurance policy
  • revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
  • russian revolution — Also called February Revolution. the uprising in Russia in March, 1917 (February Old Style), in which the Czarist government collapsed and a provisional government was established.
  • seasonal variation — season-related variation
  • second triumvirate — the coalition and joint rule of the Roman Empire by Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian, begun in 43 bc
  • secondary deviance — deviant behavior that results from being publicly labeled as deviant and treated as an outsider.
  • selective abortion — the aborting of particular embryos for medical or social reasons
  • set priority level — (SPL) The way traditional Unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt priority levels and thus blocking lower level interrupts.
  • silvery cinquefoil — any of several plants belonging to the genus Potentilla, of the rose family, having yellow, red, or white five-petaled flowers, as P. reptans (creeping cinquefoil) of the Old World, or P. argentea (silvery cinquefoil) of North America.
  • silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
  • simone de beauvoir — Simone [see-mawn] /siˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) 1908–86, French playwright, novelist, and essayist.
  • social environment — the environment developed by humans as contrasted with the natural environment; society as a whole, especially in its relation to the individual.
  • solvent extraction — Solvent extraction is the separation of a particular substance from a mixture by dissolving that substance in a solvent that will dissolve it, but which will not dissolve any other substance in the mixture.
  • split-level cooker — a cooker that is designed with a separate oven and hob so that they can be fitted wherever is most convenient in the kitchen
  • standard deviation — a measure of dispersion in a frequency distribution, equal to the square root of the mean of the squares of the deviations from the arithmetic mean of the distribution.
  • strong derived set — the set of all strong accumulation points of a given set.
  • superior vena cava — See under vena cava.
  • supportive therapy — any treatment, such as the intravenous administration of certain fluids, designed to reinforce or sustain the physiological well-being of a patient
  • the movie industry — the industry that makes entertainment films or movies
  • to play favourites — to display favouritism
  • to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
  • transverse section — cross section (def 1).
  • ulcerative colitis — chronic ulceration in the large intestine, characterized by painful abdominal cramps and profuse diarrhea containing pus, blood, and mucus.
  • universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
  • vermilion rockfish — a scarlet-red rockfish, Sebastes miniatus, inhabiting waters along the Pacific coast of North America, important as a food fish.
  • veterinary surgeon — Chiefly British. a veterinarian.
  • video entry system — a security system whereby a person in a building can see someone who wants to gain access by means of a video image
  • video surveillance — a system of monitoring activity in an area or building using a television system in which signals are transmitted from a television camera to the receivers by cables or telephone links forming a closed circuit
  • virginia snakeroot — any of various plants whose roots have been regarded as a remedy for snakebites, as the herb Aristolochia serpentaria (Virginia snakeroot) having a medicinal rhizome and rootlets, and the white-flowered Polygala senega (Seneca snakeroot) having a medicinal root.
  • visiting professor — a professor from another institution invited to teach at a university or college for a limited period, usually for a semester or one academic year.
  • voter registration — the requirement of citizens to become registered in order to vote
  • wood-burning stove — cooker: fueled by wood
  • young conservative — a member of the youth section of the United Kingdom Conservative Party
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