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20-letter words containing s, u

  • recursive subroutine — a subroutine that can call itself as part of its execution
  • red mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
  • reductio ad absurdum — a reduction to an absurdity; the refutation of a proposition by demonstrating the inevitably absurd conclusion to which it would logically lead.
  • refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
  • republic of maldives — a republic occupying an archipelago of 1087 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka: came under British protection in 1887; became independent in 1965 and a republic in 1968; member of the Commonwealth (1982–2016). The economy and infrastructure were severely damaged in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Official language: Divehi. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: rufiyaa. Capital: Malé. Pop: 393 988 (2013 est). Area: 298 sq km (115 sq miles)
  • repurchase agreement — a contract between a dealer, as a bank, and an investor, whereby the investor purchases securities with the promise that they will be bought back by the dealer on a designated date, for which the investor receives a fixed return.
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • request for proposal — (programming)   (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
  • requiescat (in pace) — may he or she rest (in peace)
  • réseaux ip européens — (RIPE) A collaboration between European networks which use the TCP/IP protocol suite to provide Internet services.
  • respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
  • return on investment — the amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested. Abbreviation: ROI.
  • return on net assets — the amount of profit computed by dividing net income before interest and taxes by the cost of net assets, usually expressed as a percentage. Abbreviation: RONA.
  • reversionary annuity — an annuity payable to a beneficiary during the period of time he or she survives the insured.
  • rheumatoid arthritis — a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by inflammation of the joints, frequently accompanied by marked deformities, and ordinarily associated with manifestations of a general, or systemic, affliction.
  • rocky mountain basic — (language)   The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • roller-blind shutter — curtain shutter.
  • rotations per minute — revolutions per minute
  • rough-winged swallow — either of two New World swallows of the genus Stelgidopteryx, having outer primary feathers with small barblike hooks on the margins.
  • rub sb's nose in sth — To rub someone's nose in something that they do not want to think about, such as a failing or a mistake they have made, means to remind them repeatedly about it.
  • saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
  • saint thomas aquinas — Saint, Aquinas, Saint Thomas.
  • santa cruz operation — (SCO) A supplier of Unix systems for Intel microprocessors. They supply Xenix and Open Desktop. Founded in 1979, SCO became a public company in May, 1993 and trades on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol SCOC. SCO maintains its world headquarters in Santa Cruz, California, USA; a European headquarters in Watford, England; a Government Systems Group in Reston, Virginia; and offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and throughout Europe and the United States. In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited of Cambridge, England, the leading supplier of Unix System windowing software.
  • sb's future lies swh — If you say that someone's future lies in a particular place or activity, you think they will be most successful or happy in that place or doing that activity.
  • scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
  • scavenger's daughter — an instrument of torture that doubled over and squeezed the body so strongly and violently that blood was brought forth from the ears and nose: invented in 16th-century England.
  • school without walls — a nontraditional educational program that uses community facilities as learning resources.
  • schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
  • schwarzschild radius — the radius at which a gravitationally collapsing celestial body becomes a black hole.
  • scream bloody murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
  • second-degree murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
  • secure accommodation — an institution where young offenders are kept in custody
  • secure sockets layer — (networking, security)   (SSL) A protocol designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide secure communications over the Internet using asymmetric key encryption. SSL is layered beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, Gopher and NNTP and is layered above the connection protocol TCP/IP. It is used by the HTTPS access method.
  • security association — (networking)   The relationship between two or more entities (typically, a computer, but could be a user on a computer, or software component) which describes how the entities will use security services, such as encryption, to communicate. See RFC 1825.
  • semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
  • serious fraud office — a UK government office responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious fraud cases
  • serra da mantiqueira — a mountain range in SE Brazil, running parallel to the coast. Highest point, 9140 feet (2785 meters).
  • setting-up exercises — gymnastic exercises for better posture, suppleness, etc
  • settle accounts with — to pay or receive a balance due
  • shareholders' equity — Shareholders' equity is the total amount of ownership investment in a company.
  • shibah asar betammuz — Shivah Asar Betammuz.
  • shifting cultivation — a land-use system, esp in tropical Africa, in which a tract of land is cultivated until its fertility diminishes, when it is abandoned until this is restored naturally
  • shivah asar betammuz — a Jewish fast day observed on the 17th day of Tammuz in memory of the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70.
  • shoulder to shoulder — the part of each side of the body in humans, at the top of the trunk, extending from each side of the base of the neck to the region where the arm articulates with the trunk.
  • shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
  • sierra madre del sur — a plateau mountain range in Guerrero and Oaxaca states, S Mexico. Highest peak 12,149 feet (3703 meters).
  • sing for your supper — If someone has to sing for their supper, they have to do a job before they are allowed to do something they want to do.
  • size-weight illusion — a standard sense illusion that a small object is heavier than a large object of the same weight
  • skull and crossbones — a representation of a front view of a human skull above two crossed bones, originally used on pirates' flags and now used as a warning sign, as in designating substances as poisons.
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