21-letter words containing u, s, r, d
- marquise de pompadour — Marquise de (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normant d'Étioles) 1721–64, mistress of Louis XV of France.
- mauvais quart d'heure — a brief unpleasant experience
- mean square deviation — variance (def 3).
- medical jurisprudence — forensic medicine.
- medium access control — Media Access Control
- motor neurone disease — Motor neurone disease is a disease which destroys the part of a person's nervous system that controls movement.
- mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
- mucopolysaccharidosis — Any of a group of metabolic disorders caused by the absence or malfunction of lysosomal enzymes needed to break down glycosaminoglycans.
- munchausen's syndrome — a mental disorder in which a patient feigns illness to obtain hospital treatment
- needs no introduction — If you say that someone or something needs no introduction, you mean that they are so well known that everyone knows who or what they are.
- nitrosylsulfuric acid — a clear, straw-colored, oily, corrosive liquid, HNO 5 S, used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes.
- northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
- notre-dame-des-vertus — an industrial suburb of Paris, on the Seine. Pop: 63 136 (1999)
- optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
- orthophosphorous acid — a white to yellowish, crystalline, hygroscopic, water-soluble solid, H 3 PO 3 , used chiefly in the synthesis of phosphites.
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- pass the hat (around) — In British English, if you pass the hat around, you collect money from a group of people, for example in order to give someone a present. In American English, you just say pass the hat.
- pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
- peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
- pincushion distortion — a distortion produced by a lens in which the magnification increases toward the edge of the field.
- pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pomp and circumstance — ceremony
- populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
- postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
- premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
- premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
- pro-industrialization — the large-scale introduction of manufacturing, advanced technical enterprises, and other productive economic activity into an area, society, country, etc.
- progressive education — any of various reformist educational philosophies and methodologies since the late 1800s, applied especially to elementary schools, that reject the rote recitation and strict discipline of traditional, single-classroom teaching, favoring instead more stimulation of the individual pupil as well as group discussion, more informality in the classroom, a broader curriculum, and use of laboratories, gymnasiums, kitchens, etc., in the school.
- prone pressure method — a method of artificial respiration in which the patient is placed face downward, pressure then being rhythmically applied with the hands to the lower part of the thorax.
- pseudohermaphroditism — an individual having internal reproductive organs of one sex and external sexual characteristics resembling those of the other sex or being ambiguous in nature. Compare hermaphrodite (def 1).
- public address system — loudspeaker
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
- purchasing department — the group of staff within an organization that is responsible for buying goods or products
- purple-fringed orchis — either of two North American orchids (Habenaria psycodes and H. fimbriata) with purple-fringed flowers
- put in the hard yards — to make a great effort to achieve an end
- radius of convergence — a positive number so related to a given power series that the power series converges for every number whose absolute value is less than this particular number.
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- reduced circumstances — If you say that someone is living in reduced circumstances, you mean that they do not have as much money as they used to have.
- registration document — a document giving identification details of a motor vehicle, including its manufacturer, date of registration, engine and chassis numbers, and owner's name
- residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
- ring-around-the-rosey — a children's game in which the players sing while going around in a circle and squat when the lyrics “all fall down” are sung.
- roodepoort-maraisburg — a city in S Transvaal, in the NE Republic of South Africa.
- rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
- s-k reduction machine — An abstract machine defined by Professor David Turner to evaluate combinator expressions represented as binary graphs. Named after the two basic combinators, S and K.
- saint-maur-des-fosses — a town in N central France, near Paris, on the Marne River.
- sampling distribution — the distribution of a statistic based on all possible random samples that can be drawn from a given population.
- scalar triple product — the volume of the parallelepiped defined by three given vectors, u, v, and w, usually represented as u·v 1 (v×w), [ uvw ], or (uvw), where × denotes a cross product and · denotes an inner product.
- school superintendent — an official whose job is to oversee school administration within a district