20-letter words containing u, n, s, c

on course/off course — If a ship or aircraft is on course, it is travelling along the correct route. If it is off course, it is no longer travelling along the correct route.
on one's own account — If you take part in a business activity on your own account, you do it for yourself, and not as a representative or employee of a company.
on someone's account — Your feelings on someone's account are the feelings you have about what they have experienced or might experience, especially when you imagine yourself to be in their situation.
on that/this account — You can use on that account or on this account when you want to say that something happens for the reason you have just mentioned.
operational calculus — a method for solving a differential equation by treating differential operators as ordinary algebraic quantities, thus obtaining a simpler problem.
orthognathic surgery — the surgical correction of deformities or malpositions of the jaw.
oscillating universe — a variant model of the closed universe in which the universe undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction.
overenthusiastically — With excessive enthusiasm.
owner-occupied house — a house that is owned by the person who lives in it
pale western cutworm — the larva of a noctuid moth, Agrotis orthogonia, of the western U.S. and Canada, that seriously damages grains, beets, potatoes, alfalfa, etc., by feeding underground on roots and stems.
paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
parametric equations — one of two or more equations expressing the location of a point on a curve or surface by determining each coordinate separately.
peaceful coexistence — competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations: peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
peculiar institution — black slavery in the southern U.S. before the Civil War.
pentose nucleic acid — a nucleic acid containing a pentose.
permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
person of no account — (University of California at Santa Cruz) Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.
peruvian mastic tree — a pepper tree, Schinus molle.
physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage) (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
polyanthus narcissus — a Eurasian amaryllidaceous plant, Narcissus tazetta, having clusters of small yellow or white fragrant flowers
porcupine provisions — provisions, such as poison pills or staggered directorships, made in the bylaws of a company to deter takeover bids
pound cost averaging — a method of accumulating capital by investing a fixed sum in a particular security at regular intervals, in order to achieve an average purchase price below the arithmetic average of the market prices on the purchase dates
precision instrument — finely-tuned device
prince rupert's drop — a glass bead in the shape of a teardrop, a by-product of the glass-making process, formed by molten glass falling into water. The body of the drop can withstand great force, for example a hammer blow, but the whole will explode if the tail is nipped or the surface scored
prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
princeton university — (body, education) Chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was British North America's fourth college. First located in Elizabeth, then in Newark, the College moved to Princeton in 1756. The College was housed in Nassau Hall, newly built on land donated by Nathaniel and Rebeckah FitzRandolph. Nassau Hall contained the entire College for nearly half a century. The College was officially renamed Princeton University in 1896; five years later in 1900 the Graduate School was established. Fully coeducational since 1969, Princeton now enrolls approximately 6,400 students (4,535 undergraduates and 1,866 graduate students). The ratio of full-time students to faculty members (in full-time equivalents) is eight to one. Today Princeton's main campus in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township consists of more than 5.5 million square feet of space in 160 buildings on 600 acres. The University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro consists of one million square feet of space in four complexes on 340 acres. As Mercer County's largest private employer and one of the largest in the Mercer/Middlesex/Somerset County region, with approximately 4,830 permanent employees - including more than 1,000 faculty members - the University plays a major role in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the region.
prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
prosecuting attorney — the public officer in a county, district, or other jurisdiction charged with carrying on the prosecution in criminal proceedings.
pseudoparenchymatous — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
quantum bogodynamics — /kwon'tm boh"goh-di:-nam"iks/ A theory that characterises the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb.
quasi-constitutional — of or relating to the constitution of a state, organization, etc.
quaternary structure — the basic structural relationship of the components of a polypeptide, specifically, the type, number, and sequence of amino acids and nucleotides in the chain.
queen's remembrancer — (in Great Britain) a judiciary official who collects debts owed to the king.
queensland cane toad — a toad, Bufo marinus, introduced into Queensland from Hawaii to control insect pests, becoming a pest itself
rachel louise carson — Christopher ("Kit") 1809–68, U.S. frontiersman and scout.
receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
reciprocal insurance — insurance in which members of a reciprocal exchange, acting through an attorney-in-fact, insure themselves and each other.
recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
recursive subroutine — a subroutine that can call itself as part of its execution
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.
requiescat (in pace) — may he or she rest (in peace)
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.
saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
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.

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