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17-letter words containing u, y

  • probability curve — a curve that describes the distribution of probability over the values of a random variable.
  • product liability — the responsibility of a manufacturer for injury or loss caused by its product.
  • production system — (programming)   A production system consists of a collection of productions (rules), a working memory of facts and an algorithm, known as forward chaining, for producing new facts from old. A rule becomes eligible to "fire" when its conditions match some set of elements currently in working memory. A conflict resolution strategy determines which of several eligible rules (the conflict set) fires next. A condition is a list of symbols which represent constants, which must be matched exactly; variables which bind to the thing they match and "<> symbol" which matches a field not equal to symbol. Example production systems are OPS5, CLIPS, flex.
  • psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
  • psycholinguistics — the study of the relationship between language and the cognitive or behavioral characteristics of those who use it.
  • psychotherapeutic — psychotherapy.
  • publicity officer — a person who is employed to get publicity for an organization, or to provide information about it
  • publicity-seeking — eager to attract publicity
  • pull your head in — be quiet!
  • purdue university — http://purdue.edu/.
  • purely and simply — You use purely and simply to emphasize that the thing you are mentioning is the only thing involved.
  • purple chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • pyroligneous acid — a yellowish, acidic, water-soluble liquid, containing about 10 percent acetic acid, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood: used for smoking meats.
  • pyrosulfuric acid — a strong, crystalline acid, H2S2O7, prepared commercially as a heavy, oily, fuming liquid: used in making explosives and dyes, as a sulfating agent, etc.
  • quality assurance — a system for ensuring a desired level of quality in the development, production, or delivery of products and services: Quality assurance for nursing homes begins with a set of standards. Abbreviation: QA.
  • quality newspaper — a more serious newspaper which gives detailed accounts of world events, as well as reports on business, culture, and society
  • quality paperback — a softbound book that is usually larger and more expensive than a mass market paperback and is sold primarily in bookstores as a trade book.
  • quantity discount — When you receive a quantity discount from a store or supplier, you pay less because you have bought a large quantity of goods. Also known as bulk buying discount.
  • quantity surveyor — A quantity surveyor is a person who calculates the cost and amount of materials and workers needed for a job such as building a house or a road.
  • quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
  • queensberry rules — the code of rules followed in modern boxing, requiring the use of padded gloves, rounds of three minutes, and restrictions on the types of blows allowed
  • raynaud's disease — a vascular disorder of unknown cause, characterized by recurrent episodes of blanching and numbness of the fingers and toes and sometimes the tip of the nose and ears, usually triggered by stress or exposure to cold.
  • recumbent bicycle — a type of bicycle that is ridden in a reclining position
  • recursive acronym — (convention)   A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
  • regulated tenancy — (in Britain) the letting of a dwelling by a nonresident private landlord, usually at a registered fair rent, from which the landlord cannot evict the tenant without a possession order from a court
  • relative humidity — the amount of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount that the air could hold at the given temperature; the ratio of the actual water vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure. Abbreviation: RH, rh.
  • republic of yemen — Republic of, a country in S Arabia, formed in 1990 by the merger of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. 207,000 sq. mi. (536,130 sq. km). Capital: Aden.
  • resource recovery — Resource recovery is when energy, a material, or a product is taken from waste and used.
  • reticulate python — a python, Python reticulatus, of southeastern Asia and the East Indies, sometimes growing to a length of 32 feet (10 meters): usually considered to be the largest snake in the world.
  • revolutionary war — American Revolution.
  • rich site summary — (web, standard)   (RSS, blog, feed) A family of standard web document types containing regularly updated, short articles or news items. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds", "news feeds" or just "feeds") can be read with an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or Feedly. These are sometimes called "aggregators" because they combine multiple RSS feeds which the user can browse as a single list. The RSS reader tracks which articles the use has read, and is typically set to show only new articles, hence the idea of a "feed" or flow of new items. Most RSS feeds are based on RDF. RDF is a structured document format for describing textual resources such as news articles available on the web. RSS originally stood for "RDF Site Summary" as it was designed to provide short descriptions of (changes to) a website. Because it provides a standard way to deliver, or "syndicate", news or updates from one site to another, RSS is sometimes expanded as "Really Simple Syndication". It is closely associated with blogs, most of which provide an RSS feed of articles.
  • rotary cultivator — a machine for breaking up and tilling soil, consisting of a series of blades mounted on a revolving power-driven shaft
  • rough puff pastry — a rich flaky pastry made with butter and used for pie-crusts, flans, etc
  • royal institution — a British society founded in 1799 for the dissemination of scientific knowledge
  • rub the wrong way — to subject the surface of (a thing or person) to pressure and friction, as in cleaning, smoothing, polishing, coating, massaging, or soothing: to rub a table top with wax polish; to rub the entire back area.
  • safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
  • safety precaution — a precaution that is taken in order to ensure that something is safe and not dangerous
  • say the unsayable — to express an opinion thought to be too controversial to mention
  • school playground — school's outdoor recreation area
  • seaweed marquetry — marquetry having the form of symmetrical, foliate scrolls, as on English cabinetwork of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
  • secondary product — a product that is not the main product of an industry; a by-product
  • secondary quality — one of the qualities attributed by the mind to an object perceived, such as color, temperature, or taste.
  • sensitivity group — a group of persons participating in sensitivity training.
  • shipping industry — the industry concerned with transporting freight, esp by ship
  • shortcrust pastry — a basic type of pastry that is made with half the quantity of fat to flour, and has a crisp but crumbly texture
  • shubra al khaymah — a city in NE Egypt, a Cairo suburb.
  • shuttle diplomacy — diplomatic negotiations carried out by a mediator who travels back and forth between the negotiating parties.
  • situational irony — irony involving a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended, so that the outcome is contrary to what was expected.
  • sixty-fourth note — a note having one sixty-fourth of the time value of a whole note; hemidemisemiquaver.
  • sixty-fourth rest — a rest equal in time value to a sixty-fourth note.
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