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

  • moving spirit/force — The moving spirit or moving force behind something is the person or thing that caused it to start and to keep going, or that influenced people to take part in it.
  • multiple-entry visa — a visa that permits the holder to enter a country several times
  • mushroom ventilator — a ventilator having at the top of a vertical shaft a broad rounded cap that can be screwed down to close it.
  • nail polish remover — solvent for removing nail polish
  • national serviceman — a soldier undertaking compulsory military service
  • neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon)   The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
  • negative resistance — a characteristic of certain electronic components in which an increase in the applied voltage increases the resistance, producing a proportional decrease in current
  • new york university — (NYU) Established in 1831, New York University today includes thirteen schools, colleges and divisions located in New York City's borough of Manhattan, as well as research centers and programs in the surrounding suburbs and abroad.
  • no shrinking violet — If you say that someone is no shrinking violet, you mean that they are not at all shy.
  • non-interventionism — abstention by a nation from interference in the affairs of other nations or in those of its own political subdivisions.
  • observation balloon — a balloon that is used for gathering information and reconnaissance purposes and spotting aircraft
  • old church slavonic — the oldest attested Slavic language, an ecclesiastical language written first by Cyril and Methodius in a Bible translation of the 9th century and continued in use for about two centuries. It represents the South Slavic, Bulgarian dialect of 9th-century Salonika with considerable addition of other South and West Slavic elements. Abbreviation: OCS.
  • olive-backed thrush — Swainson's thrush.
  • over-sentimentality — the quality or state of being sentimental or excessively sentimental.
  • parainfluenza virus — any of a group of viruses that cause respiratory infections with influenza-like symptoms, esp in children
  • perfect progressive — a verb form including the auxiliary have followed by been and a present participle, noting the continuation of an activity or event, its incompleteness or interruption, and its connection to the temporal point of reference, as in I've been waiting for over an hour, They had been talking about her before she came into the room, or In July, he will have been living here for two years.
  • pneumogastric nerve — the vagus nerve.
  • popular sovereignty — the doctrine that sovereign power is vested in the people and that those chosen to govern, as trustees of such power, must exercise it in conformity with the general will.
  • primitive methodist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Primitive Methodist Church) founded in England in 1812 and later established in the U.S., characterized by its adherence to the basic doctrines, principles, and practices taught by John Wesley.
  • private first class — a soldier ranking above a private and below a corporal or specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army, and above a private and below a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
  • private prosecution — a prosecution started by a private individual rather than by the police
  • privatization issue — an issue of shares available for purchase by members of the public when a publicly owned organization is transferred to the private sector
  • professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
  • progressive judaism — Reform Judaism.
  • pseudo-conservative — disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
  • pseudo-intransitive — denoting an occurrence of a normally transitive verb in which a direct object is not explicitly stated or forms the subject of the sentence, as in Margaret is cooking or these apples cook well
  • pyorrhea alveolaris — a chronic periodontitis of the gums and tooth sockets, characterized by the formation of pus and, usually, by loosening of the teeth
  • pyorrhea-alveolaris — Pathology. a discharge of pus.
  • radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
  • reactive depression — depression occurring in response to some situational stress, as loss of one's job.
  • redbrick university — any new or little-known university, especially one built since World War II to educate students in industrial regions, emphasizing technical subjects rather than the classics, and often partially supported by government funds.
  • removable hard disk — (storage)   A type of magnetic disk, or possibly magneto-optical disk which is not permanently attached to the disk drive (not a fixed disk) but which can be taken out and replaced, allowing many disks to be used in the same drive. The term "removable disk" would seem to be applicable to floppy disks but is generally reserved for hard disks in suitable cartridges such as those made by Syquest, Iomega and others. Removable disk packs were common on minicomputers such as the PDP-11 in use in the 1970s except that the drives were the size of washing machines and the disk packs as big as car wheels. Removable disks became popular on microcomputers in the 1990s as a cheap way of expanding disk space, transporting large amounts of data between computers and storing backups. Large, cheap fixed hard disks and USB memory sticks have made removable disks less attractive.
  • renaissance revival — a mid-Victorian architectural style adapting the classical forms of 15th- and 16th-century Italian architecture, especially palace architecture, usually characterized by blocklike massing, with refined classicized decorative detail around regularly organized windows.
  • reserved occupation — in time of war, an occupation from which one will not be called up for military service
  • resistance movement — a movement fighting (for freedom, etc), often secretly or illegally, against an invader in an occupied country or against the country's government, etc
  • restorative justice — a theory and method in criminal justice in which it is arranged that the victim and the community receive restitution from the offender.
  • reverse engineering — (systems, product, design)   The process of analysing an existing system to identify its components and their interrelationships and create representations of the system in another form or at a higher level of abstraction. Reverse engineering is usually undertaken in order to redesign the system for better maintainability or to produce a copy of a system without access to the design from which it was originally produced. For example, one might take the executable code of a computer program, run it to study how it behaved with different inputs and then attempt to write a program which behaved identically (or better). An integrated circuit might also be reverse engineered by an unscrupulous company wishing to make unlicensed copies of a popular chip.
  • reversible reaction — a reaction that, depending on ambient conditions, can proceed in either of two directions: the production of the reaction products from the reactants, or the production of the original reactants from the formed reaction products. Compare equilibrium (def 4).
  • ride roughshod over — shod with horseshoes having projecting nails or points.
  • sacrifice operative — a euphemistic term for a suicide bomber
  • san salvador island — an island in the central Bahamas: the first land in the New World seen by Christopher Columbus (1492). Area: 156 sq km (60 sq miles)
  • saturation coverage — news coverage (of an event, etc) that is very thorough in order not to miss any details
  • savings certificate — a certificate of deposit for a specific sum of money in a savings account, especially a deposit for a fixed term at a specified interest rate.
  • sell down the river — a natural stream of water of fairly large size flowing in a definite course or channel or series of diverging and converging channels.
  • semipalmated plover — a New World plover, Charadrius semipalmatus, having a black ring around the chest and semipalmate feet, inhabiting beaches and salt marshes.
  • sensitometric curve — characteristic curve.
  • sensory deprivation — the experimental or natural reduction of environmental stimuli, as by physical isolation or loss of eyesight, often leading to cognitive, perceptual, or behavioral changes, as disorientation, delusions, or panic.
  • separation negative — Photography. a black-and-white negative of one of the additive primary colors used to form a color image.
  • seven hills of rome — the hills on which the ancient city of Rome was built: the Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Caelian, Aventine, Esquiline, and Viminal
  • simple closed curve — a curve that is closed and that has no loops or points missing; a curve for which there exists a homeomorphism mapping it to a circle.
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