20-letter words containing u, p, e

freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
fundamental particle — elementary particle.
general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
give sb/get the push — If you get the push or are given the push, you are told that you are not wanted any more, either in your job or by someone you are having a relationship with.
glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
group code recording — (storage) (GCR) A recording method used for 6250 BPI magnetic tapes. GCR typically uses a group of five bits of code to represent four bits of data. The encoding ensures no more than two or three zeros occur in a row, and no more than eight or so ones occur in a row, where zeros represent an absense of magnetic change. GCR is also used on Commodore Business Machines diskette drives; the 4040, 8050, 154x, 157x and 158x series of 5.25" and 3.5" low and high density diskette drives used with 8-bit home computers circa 1977 to 1992. It was also supported on Amiga internal and external drives but only used for reading non-Amiga disks. Compare NRZI, PE.
group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
group of twenty-four — a group of twenty-four rich and industrialized countries of the world, whose heads of government meet regularly to coordinate the position of developing countries on monetary and development issues
group representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of interests rather than by geographical location.
hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
hang up one's spikes — to retire, as from a professional sport
hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
himalayan guinea pig — a variety of short-haired guinea pig with markings on its nose, ears, and feet
hipparchus satellite — an astronometric satellite launched in 1989 by the European Space Agency that measured the position, proper motion, and brightness of 118 218 stars down to 12th magnitude and the magnitude and colour of a million stars down to 10th magnitude
hire-purchase system — a system of payment for a commodity in regular installments while using it.
hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking
houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
how are you keeping? — how are you?
human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
ideal of pure reason — God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
ignotum per ignotius — an explanation that is obscurer than the thing to be explained
imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
in the lap of luxury — If you say that someone lives in the lap of luxury, you mean that they live in conditions of great comfort and wealth.
in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
inertial upper stage — a U.S. two-stage, solid-propellant rocket used to boost a relatively heavy spacecraft from a low earth orbit into a planetary trajectory or an elliptical transfer orbit. Abbreviation: IUS.
infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
instruction prefetch — (architecture) A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
jacopo della quercia — Jacopo Della [yah-kaw-paw del-lah] /ˈyɑ kɔ pɔ ˌdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), 1374?–1438, Italian sculptor.
james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
japanese honeysuckle — a climbing honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, introduced into the eastern U.S. from Asia, having fragrant, white flowers that fade to yellow.
join-the-dots puzzle — a puzzle requiring you to connect a series of dots by drawing lines between them. If the dots are correctly connected, the result is a picture
judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
juno and the paycock — a play (1924) by Sean O'Casey.
justice of the peace — a local public officer, usually having jurisdiction to try and determine minor civil and criminal cases and to hold preliminary examinations of persons accused of more serious crimes, and having authority to administer oaths, solemnize marriages, etc.
keep one's pecker up — If you tell someone to keep their pecker up, you are encouraging them to be cheerful in a difficult situation.
keep your mouth shut — If you keep your mouth shut about something, you do not talk about it, especially because it is a secret.
kingston upon thames — a borough of Greater London, England.
knockout competition — used to describe a competition in which competitors are eliminated progressively

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