23-letter words containing v, e, t, r
- every trick in the book — If someone tries every trick in the book, they try every possible thing that they can think of in order to achieve something.
- extravehicular activity — the act or an instance of floating and manoeuvring in space, outside but attached by a lifeline to a spacecraft
- fear-driven development — (jargon, humour) When project management adds more pressure (fires someone or something). A play on test-driven development.
- first come first served — You say 'first come first served' to indicate that a group of people or things will be dealt with or given something in the order in which they arrive.
- five-and-ten-cent store — a store that sells a wide variety of inexpensive merchandise, orig. with many articles priced at five or ten cents
- ge information services — (networking, company) One of the leading on-line services, started on 1st October 1985, providing subscribers with hundreds of special interest areas, computer hardware and software support, award-winning multi-player games, the most software files in the industry (over 200 000), worldwide news, sports updates, business news, investment strategies, and Internet electronic mail and fax (GE Mail). Interactive conversations (Chat Lines) and bulletin boards (Round Tables) with associated software archives are also provided. GEnie databases (through the ARTIST gateway) allow users to search the full text of thousands of publications, including Dun & Bradstreet Company Profiles; a GEnie NewsStand with more than 900 newspapers, magazines, and newsletters; a Reference Center with information ranging from Agriculture to World History; the latest in medical information from MEDLINE; and patent and trademark registrations. Telephone: +1 (800) 638 9636. TDD: +1 (800) 238 9172. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
- give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
- give (or get) the gate — to subject (or be subjected) to dismissal
- give one's eyeteeth for — to go to any lengths to achieve or obtain (something)
- give someone the finger — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
- give something a rub-up — to smooth or polish something
- greatest common divisor — the largest number that is a common divisor of a given set of numbers. Abbreviation: G.C.D.
- hate-driven development — (programming, humour) A play on test-driven development for use when a piece of code is not necessarily broken but you hate the way it is written so much that you feel compelled to rewrite it.
- have bats in the belfry — to be mad or eccentric; have strange ideas
- have one over the eight — to be drunk
- have one's act together — anything done, being done, or to be done; deed; performance: a heroic act.
- have one's heart set on — Anatomy. a hollow, pumplike organ of blood circulation, composed mainly of rhythmically contractile smooth muscle, located in the chest between the lungs and slightly to the left and consisting of four chambers: a right atrium that receives blood returning from the body via the superior and inferior vena cavae, a right ventricle that pumps the blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation, a left atrium that receives the oxygenated blood via the pulmonary veins and passes it through the mitral valve, and a left ventricle that pumps the oxygenated blood, via the aorta, throughout the body.
- have one's work cut out — to have as much work as one can manage
- have struck/hit paydirt — If you say that someone has struck paydirt or has hit paydirt, you mean that they have achieved sudden success or gained a lot of money very quickly.
- hierarchical navigation — (web) On a web page, any type of menu whose hierarchical structure matches that of the site to which the page belongs. A hierarchical navigation menu allows the user to jump ("navigate") directly to a section of the site several levels below the top. The menu may present only a fixed number of levels rather than the whole structure.
- hypothetical imperative — (esp in the moral philosophy of Kant) any conditional rule of action, concerned with means and ends rather than with duty for its own sake
- interval of convergence — an interval associated with a given power series such that the series converges for all values of the variable inside the interval and diverges for all values outside it.
- invertible counterpoint — counterpoint in which the voices, while retaining their original form, may be interchanged above or below one another in any order.
- lady chatterley's lover — a novel (1928) by D. H. Lawrence.
- leave no stone unturned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
- living on borrowed time — living an unexpected extension of life
- masters of the universe — extremely powerful and wealthy members of the financial professions
- moving target indicator — a Doppler-radar presentation that indicates moving targets only, stationary objects reflecting signals that the system rejects. Abbreviation: MTI.
- national health service — In Britain, the National Health Service is the state system for providing medical care. It is paid for by taxes.
- new product development — the process of developing new products for the market
- non-destructive testing — Non-destructive testing is the examination of the quality of a component without changing it in any way.
- nonverbal communication — gesture and facial expression
- oil-immersion objective — immersion objective.
- on one's best behaviour — behaving with careful good manners
- order of the visitation — a religious order of nuns founded in 1610 by St Francis of Sales and dedicated to contemplation and the cultivation of humility, gentleness, and sisterly love
- over-the-counter market — a security market that deals in securities that are not listed or quoted on a stock exchange
- overnight accommodation — accommodation provided by an establishment (such as a hotel) where guests can sleep or spend the night
- own occupation coverage — Own occupation coverage is insurance that covers a person if they cannot work in their own occupation, following an accident, injury, or disability.
- parliamentary privilege — legal immunity allowing lawmakers to speak freely without being subject to the usual laws of slander
- participant observation — a technique of field research, used in anthropology and sociology, by which an investigator (participant observer) studies the life of a group by sharing in its activities.
- positive discrimination — special opportunities
- presidential government — a system of government in which the powers of the president are constitutionally separate from those of the legislature.
- print services facility — (printer) (PSF) IBM's system software which generates native IBM printer language, IPDS and, depending on the version, PostScript and LaserJet PCL. See also: Advanced Function Presentation.
- private branch exchange — (communications) (PBX) A telephone exchange local to a particular organisation who use, rather than provide, telephone services. The earliest PBXs were manual (Private Manual Branch EXchange, PMBX) but are now more likely to be automatic (Private Automatic Branch eXchange).
- private limited company — a company whose shares can be bought by the public
- progressive cavity pump — A progressive cavity pump is a pump with an electric motor that rotates rods to make fluid in cavities move upward.
- provocative maintenance — [Common ironic mutation of "preventive maintenance"] Actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; such "maintenance" often *induces* problems, or otherwise results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also scratch monkey.
- quote chapter and verse — [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt from an appropriate bible. "I don't care if "rn" gets it wrong; "Followup-To: poster" is explicitly permitted by RFC 1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." See also legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
- regressive assimilation — assimilation in which a following sound has an effect on a preceding one, as in pronouncing have in have to as [haf] /hæf/ (Show IPA) influenced by the voiceless (t) in to.
- relative molecular mass — the sum of all the relative atomic masses of the atoms in a molecule; the ratio of the average mass per molecule of a specified isotopic composition of a substance to one-twelfth the mass of an atom of carbon-12