21-letter words containing s, t, a, r, l
- otorhinolaryngologist — (medicine) Doctor specializing in otorhinolaryngology, the study of ear, nose, and throat.
- parasitic oscillation — (in an electronic circuit) oscillation at any undesired frequency
- partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
- paternal grandparents — the parents of someone's father
- person-to-person call — a call to a specified person; if that person cannot take the call there is no charge
- personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
- phrase-structure rule — a rule that generates a sentence or other syntactic construction from words and phrases and identifies its constituent structure.
- physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
- picture quality scale — (graphics) (PQS) A system for rating image quality based upon features of images that affect their perception by the human eye, rather than the traditional signal-to-noise ratio which examines differences for every single pixel.
- piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
- pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
- place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
- plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
- play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
- political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
- poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
- populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
- portable common loops — (PCL) A language which started out as an implementation of CommonLoops and turned into a portable CLOS implementation. Version 1992-08-28. It runs under Lucid Common LISP 4.0.1 and CMU Common LISP 16e.
- posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
- pre-sales support rep — (job) A person who supports sales by analysing customer requirements, proposing and demonstrating technical solutions, ensuring acceptable product installations, training users and providing initial technical support.
- premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
- prince rupert's metal — a brass composed of from about 60 to 85 percent copper and about 15 to 40 percent zinc, used to imitate gold.
- private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
- pro-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
- public address system — loudspeaker
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public health service — the agency that is responsible for the health of the general public
- public transportation — means of fare-paying travel
- public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
- pulse height analyser — a multichannel analyser that sorts pulses into selected amplitude ranges
- pulse height analyzer — an instrument that records or counts an electrical pulse if its amplitude falls within specified limits: used in nuclear physics research for the determination of energy spectra of nuclear radiations
- put sb in their place — If you put someone in their place, you show them that they are less important or clever than they think they are.
- quartermaster general — a general in command of the Quartermaster Corps.
- racial discrimination — prejudice based on race
- ralph roister doister — a play (1553?) by Nicholas Udall: the earliest known English comedy.
- rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
- rattle someone's cage — to upset or anger someone
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- real estate insurance — Real estate insurance is insurance of property, land, and buildings.
- real estate liability — Real estate liability is liability for risks that come from owning real estate.
- real operating system — (operating system, abuse) The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
- real-estate developer — a person who buys and develops houses, buildings, and land in order to sell them and make a profit from them
- reckless endangerment — a crime whereby a person behaves in a reckless manner which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- reconnaissance patrol — a patrol made by soldiers in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- relaxation oscillator — a nonsinusoidal oscillator, the timing of which is controlled by the charge and discharge time constants of resistance and capacitance components
- requirements analysis — (project) The process of reviewing a business's processes to determine the business needs and functional requirements that a system must meet.
- residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
- rest on one's laurels — Also called bay, sweet bay. a small European evergreen tree, Laurus nobilis, of the laurel family, having dark, glossy green leaves. Compare laurel family.
- reverse polish syntax — postfix notation