18-letter words containing v, l, i
- reinvent the wheel — (jargon) To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle.
- relative frequency — the ratio of the number of times an event occurs to the number of occasions on which it might occur in the same period.
- relative major key — a major key that has the same key signature as a minor key, but a different tonic
- relative minor key — a minor key that has the same key signature as a major key, but a different tonic
- restrictive clause — a relative clause that identifies the antecedent and that is usually not set off by commas in English. In The year that just ended was bad for crops, the clause that just ended is a restrictive clause.
- revolution counter — a device for counting or recording the number of revolutions made by a rotating shaft, as of a motor or engine.
- revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
- ribbon development — housing or commercial buildings built along a stretch of road.
- rr lyrae variables — any of the very regular, short-period, pulsating variable stars having periods between 1.5 and 29 hours
- russian revolution — Also called February Revolution. the uprising in Russia in March, 1917 (February Old Style), in which the Czarist government collapsed and a provisional government was established.
- sacrificial victim — a person who is ritually killed with the intention of propitiating or pleasing a deity
- school-leaving age — the minimum age that children are legally allowed to leave school - in Britain and the United States, this is 16
- seasonal variation — season-related variation
- selective abortion — the aborting of particular embryos for medical or social reasons
- selective breeding — the raising of animals with particular genetic traits through careful choice of parents
- self-advertisement — a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
- set priority level — (SPL) The way traditional Unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt priority levels and thus blocking lower level interrupts.
- significance level — (in the statistical test of a hypothesis) the maximum probability of a Type I error for all distributions consistent with the null hypothesis.
- silver certificate — a former paper currency first issued in 1878 by the U.S. federal government for circulation, equal to and redeemable for silver to a stated value.
- silvery cinquefoil — any of several plants belonging to the genus Potentilla, of the rose family, having yellow, red, or white five-petaled flowers, as P. reptans (creeping cinquefoil) of the Old World, or P. argentea (silvery cinquefoil) of North America.
- silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
- slobodan milosevic — Slobodan [sloh-buh-dain] /ˈsloʊ bəˌdɛən/ (Show IPA), 1941–2006, Yugoslav and Serbian politician: president of Serbia 1989–97, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1997–2000, accused of war crimes 2001.
- social environment — the environment developed by humans as contrasted with the natural environment; society as a whole, especially in its relation to the individual.
- sodium-vapour lamp — a type of electric lamp consisting of a glass tube containing neon and sodium vapour at low pressure through which an electric current is passed to give an orange light. They are used in street lighting
- solvent extraction — Solvent extraction is the separation of a particular substance from a mixture by dissolving that substance in a solvent that will dissolve it, but which will not dissolve any other substance in the mixture.
- special relativity — the state or fact of being relative.
- split-level cooker — a cooker that is designed with a separate oven and hob so that they can be fitted wherever is most convenient in the kitchen
- st. lawrence river — a river in SE Canada, flowing NE from Lake Ontario, forming part of the boundary between New York and Ontario, and emptying into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 760 miles (1225 km) long.
- standard of living — a grade or level of subsistence and comfort in everyday life enjoyed by a community, class, or individual: The well-educated generally have a high standard of living.
- survival mechanism — something you or your body does automatically, in order to survive in a dangerous or unpleasant situation
- symbolist movement — a movement beginning in French and Belgian poetry towards the end of the 19th century with the verse of Mallarmé, Valéry, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Maeterlinck, and others, and seeking to express states of mind rather than objective reality by making use of the power of words and images to suggest as well as denote
- talk of the devil! — used when an absent person who has been the subject of conversation appears
- teacher evaluation — the process of vetting teachers to maintain teaching standards
- technical reserves — Technical reserves are amounts of money set aside to pay for underwriting liabilities.
- teleobjective lens — telephoto lens.
- telephone receiver — a device, as in a telephone, that converts changes in an electric current into sound.
- television cabinet — a cabinet on which a television set is placed or in which it is encased
- television company — a company that broadcasts programmes by television
- television licence — a certificate giving official permission to own a television set
- television station — station (def 8).
- tender loving care — considerate and kindly care, as of someone who is ill, upset, etc
- thomas alva edison — Thomas Alva [al-vuh] /ˈæl və/ (Show IPA), 1847–1931, U.S. inventor, especially of electrical devices.
- to play favourites — to display favouritism
- to save one's life — If you say that someone cannot do something to save their life, you are emphasizing that they do it very badly.
- to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
- transylvanian alps — a mountain range in S Romania; a SW extension of the Carpathian Mountains. Highest peak: Mount Negoiu, 2548 m (8360 ft)
- traveling salesman — a male representative of a business firm who travels in an assigned territory soliciting orders for a company's products or services.
- travelling library — a mobile library in which a vehicle such as a van delivers books to be borrowed
- tristimulus values — three values that together are used to describe a colour and are the amounts of three reference colours that can be mixed to give the same visual sensation as the colour considered
- turbine ventilator — a ventilator, usually mounted on the roof of a building, deck of a ship, etc., having at its head a globular, vaned rotor that is rotated by the wind, conveying air through a duct to and from a chamber below.