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

  • 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').
  • private enterprise — free enterprise (def 1).
  • productivity bonus — an extra payment made to workers for being more productive or yielding more favourable results than normal
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • representativeness — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • research-intensive — focusing financial and other resources on research and development as opposed to capital and labor; noting or pertaining to a high ratio of expenditure on research in relation to the value of net output.
  • restrictive clause — a relative clause that identifies the antecedent and that is usually not set off by commas in English. In The year that just ended was bad for crops, the clause that just ended is a restrictive clause.
  • 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.
  • rr lyrae variables — any of the very regular, short-period, pulsating variable stars having periods between 1.5 and 29 hours
  • 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.
  • sacrificial victim — a person who is ritually killed with the intention of propitiating or pleasing a deity
  • 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
  • selective breeding — the raising of animals with particular genetic traits through careful choice of parents
  • self-advertisement — a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
  • service department — a repair shop
  • 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.
  • silver certificate — a former paper currency first issued in 1878 by the U.S. federal government for circulation, equal to and redeemable for silver to a stated value.
  • 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.
  • sodium-vapour lamp — a type of electric lamp consisting of a glass tube containing neon and sodium vapour at low pressure through which an electric current is passed to give an orange light. They are used in street lighting
  • 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.
  • special relativity — the state or fact of being relative.
  • 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
  • st. lawrence river — a river in SE Canada, flowing NE from Lake Ontario, forming part of the boundary between New York and Ontario, and emptying into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 760 miles (1225 km) long.
  • 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.
  • standard of living — a grade or level of subsistence and comfort in everyday life enjoyed by a community, class, or individual: The well-educated generally have a high standard of living.
  • 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
  • survival mechanism — something you or your body does automatically, in order to survive in a dangerous or unpleasant situation
  • tardive dyskinesia — a disorder characterized by restlessness and involuntary rolling of the tongue or twitching of the face, trunk, or limbs, usually occurring as a complication of long-term therapy with antipsychotic drugs.
  • technical reserves — Technical reserves are amounts of money set aside to pay for underwriting liabilities.
  • the movie industry — the industry that makes entertainment films or movies
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