20-letter words containing u, r, g, e, o
- rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
- ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
- scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- 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)
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- 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.
- slip through the net — If criminals slip through the net, they avoid being caught by the system or trap that was meant to catch them.
- soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
- special patrol group — a former police unit tasked with counter terrorism in the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- squatter sovereignty — (used contemptuously by its opponents) popular sovereignty (def 2).
- strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
- the founding fathers — any of the men who were members of the U.S. Constituional Convention of 1787
- the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
- thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
- thread language zero — (language) (TL0) The instruction set of the TAM (Threaded Abstract Machine), used to implement Id.
- to be brought to bed — to give birth (to)
- to bring up the rear — If a person or vehicle is bringing up the rear, they are the last person or vehicle in a moving line of them.
- to get your bearings — to find out where one is or to find out what one should do next
- to get your own back — If you get your own back on someone, you have your revenge on them because of something bad that they have done to you.
- to give sb their due — You can say 'to give him his due', or 'giving him his due' when you are admitting that there are some good things about someone, even though there are things that you do not like about them.
- to spread your wings — If you spread your wings, you do something new and rather difficult or move to a new place, because you feel more confident in your abilities than you used to and you want to gain wider experience.
- to tighten your belt — If you have to tighten your belt, you have to spend less money and manage without things because you have less money than you used to have.
- transposed conjugate — adjoint (def 2).
- triple witching hour — the last hour of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the four Fridays each year when stock options, stock index futures, and options on such futures simultaneously expire: regarded as a time of extreme volatility in trading.
- under/below strength — If an army or team is under strength or below strength, it does not have all the members that it needs or usually has.
- underground railroad — Also called underground railway. a railroad running through a continuous tunnel, as under city streets; subway.
- unemployment figures — statistics relating to the number of people who are out of work
- unsaddling enclosure — the area at a racecourse where horses are unsaddled after a race and often where awards are given to owners, trainers, and jockeys
- walking-around money — money that is carried on the person for routine expenses and minor emergencies; pocket money.
- white-flowered gourd — the hard-shelled fruit of any of various plants, especially those of Lagenaria siceraria (white-flowered gourd or bottle gourd) whose dried shell is used for bowls and other utensils, and Cucurbita pepo (yellow-flowered gourd) used ornamentally. Compare gourd family.
- your marching orders — If you give someone their marching orders, you tell them that you no longer want or need them, for example as your employee or as your lover.