23-letter words containing t, r, a, v
- hate-driven development — (programming, humour) A play on test-driven development for use when a piece of code is not necessarily broken but you hate the way it is written so much that you feel compelled to rewrite it.
- have bats in the belfry — to be mad or eccentric; have strange ideas
- have one over the eight — to be drunk
- have one's act together — anything done, being done, or to be done; deed; performance: a heroic act.
- have one's heart set on — Anatomy. a hollow, pumplike organ of blood circulation, composed mainly of rhythmically contractile smooth muscle, located in the chest between the lungs and slightly to the left and consisting of four chambers: a right atrium that receives blood returning from the body via the superior and inferior vena cavae, a right ventricle that pumps the blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation, a left atrium that receives the oxygenated blood via the pulmonary veins and passes it through the mitral valve, and a left ventricle that pumps the oxygenated blood, via the aorta, throughout the body.
- have one's work cut out — to have as much work as one can manage
- have struck/hit paydirt — If you say that someone has struck paydirt or has hit paydirt, you mean that they have achieved sudden success or gained a lot of money very quickly.
- hierarchical navigation — (web) On a web page, any type of menu whose hierarchical structure matches that of the site to which the page belongs. A hierarchical navigation menu allows the user to jump ("navigate") directly to a section of the site several levels below the top. The menu may present only a fixed number of levels rather than the whole structure.
- hypothetical imperative — (esp in the moral philosophy of Kant) any conditional rule of action, concerned with means and ends rather than with duty for its own sake
- in favour/out of favour — If someone or something is in favour, people like or support them. If they are out of favour, people no longer like or support them.
- interval of convergence — an interval associated with a given power series such that the series converges for all values of the variable inside the interval and diverges for all values outside it.
- lady chatterley's lover — a novel (1928) by D. H. Lawrence.
- leave no stone unturned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
- masters of the universe — extremely powerful and wealthy members of the financial professions
- moving target indicator — a Doppler-radar presentation that indicates moving targets only, stationary objects reflecting signals that the system rejects. Abbreviation: MTI.
- national health service — In Britain, the National Health Service is the state system for providing medical care. It is paid for by taxes.
- nonverbal communication — gesture and facial expression
- on one's best behaviour — behaving with careful good manners
- order of the visitation — a religious order of nuns founded in 1610 by St Francis of Sales and dedicated to contemplation and the cultivation of humility, gentleness, and sisterly love
- over-the-counter market — a security market that deals in securities that are not listed or quoted on a stock exchange
- overnight accommodation — accommodation provided by an establishment (such as a hotel) where guests can sleep or spend the night
- own occupation coverage — Own occupation coverage is insurance that covers a person if they cannot work in their own occupation, following an accident, injury, or disability.
- parliamentary privilege — legal immunity allowing lawmakers to speak freely without being subject to the usual laws of slander
- participant observation — a technique of field research, used in anthropology and sociology, by which an investigator (participant observer) studies the life of a group by sharing in its activities.
- positive discrimination — special opportunities
- presidential government — a system of government in which the powers of the president are constitutionally separate from those of the legislature.
- print services facility — (printer) (PSF) IBM's system software which generates native IBM printer language, IPDS and, depending on the version, PostScript and LaserJet PCL. See also: Advanced Function Presentation.
- private branch exchange — (communications) (PBX) A telephone exchange local to a particular organisation who use, rather than provide, telephone services. The earliest PBXs were manual (Private Manual Branch EXchange, PMBX) but are now more likely to be automatic (Private Automatic Branch eXchange).
- private limited company — a company whose shares can be bought by the public
- productivity bargaining — the process of reaching an agreement (productivity agreement) through collective bargaining whereby the employees of an organization agree to changes which are intended to improve productivity in return for an increase in pay or other benefits
- progressive cavity pump — A progressive cavity pump is a pump with an electric motor that rotates rods to make fluid in cavities move upward.
- provocative maintenance — [Common ironic mutation of "preventive maintenance"] Actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; such "maintenance" often *induces* problems, or otherwise results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also scratch monkey.
- quantum flavourdynamics — a gauge theory of the electromagnetic and weak interactions
- quote chapter and verse — [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt from an appropriate bible. "I don't care if "rn" gets it wrong; "Followup-To: poster" is explicitly permitted by RFC 1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." See also legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
- regressive assimilation — assimilation in which a following sound has an effect on a preceding one, as in pronouncing have in have to as [haf] /hæf/ (Show IPA) influenced by the voiceless (t) in to.
- relative molecular mass — the sum of all the relative atomic masses of the atoms in a molecule; the ratio of the average mass per molecule of a specified isotopic composition of a substance to one-twelfth the mass of an atom of carbon-12
- relative sunspot number — a number indicating the degree of sunspot activity on the sun as a factor of observer idiosyncrasies, the number of sunspot groups, and the number of individual sunspots.
- relativity of knowledge — the theory that all knowledge is relative to the mind, or that things can be known only through their effects on the mind, and that consequently there can be no knowledge of reality as it is in itself
- residual current device — a circuit-breaking device installed in electrical equipment to protect the operator from electrocution
- reverse polish notation — postfix notation
- roentgen equivalent man — the dose of ionizing radiation that produces the same effect in man as one roentgen of x- or gamma-radiation
- rotation-inversion axis — an axis of a crystal such that rotating about the axis and then inverting the crystal brings the crystal back to its original position.
- saint christopher-nevis — St. Kitts-Nevis.
- schematic type variable — generic type variable
- secondary seventh chord — a chord formed by superposition of three thirds upon any degree of the scale except the dominant.
- self extracting archive — (file format) (SEA) An archive format used on the Apple Macintosh. Double-clicking a file of this type should extract its contents.
- separation of variables — a grouping of the terms of an ordinary differential equation so that associated with each differential is a factor consisting entirely of functions of the independent variable appearing in the differential.
- small-saver certificate — a savings certificate issued in a small denomination.
- software developers kit — (jargon, product) (SDK, or "Software Development Kit") Software provided by a software vendor to allow their products to be used with those of other software vendors.
- sovereignty association — (in Canada) a proposed arrangement by which Quebec would become independent but would maintain a formal association with Canada