20-letter words containing ra
- dirac delta function — delta function.
- disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
- distributed practice — learning with reasonably long intervals between separate occasions of learning
- double-trailer truck — tandem trailer (def 1).
- draw close/draw near — If an event or period of time is drawing closer or is drawing nearer, it is approaching.
- draw the short straw — to be the person (as in drawing lots) to whom an unwelcome task or fate falls
- dry-bulb temperature — A dry-bulb temperature is the temperature of a dry surface in a vapor-gas environment.
- dun & bradstreet — an agency furnishing subscribers with information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses
- dynamic link library — Dynamically Linked Library
- economic rationalism — an economic policy based on the efficiency of market forces, characterized by minimal government intervention, tax cuts, privatization, and deregulation of labour markets
- electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
- electrocardiographic — Of or pertaining to an electrocardiogram (ECG) or electrocardiograph.
- electroencephalogram — A test or record of brain activity produced by electroencephalography.
- electroshock therapy — a form of shock therapy in which electric current is applied to the brain
- entrance examination — admission test
- epidural anaesthesia — numbing injection in the spine
- epitaxial transistor — a transistor made by depositing a thin pure layer of semiconductor material (epitaxial layer) onto a crystalline support by epitaxy. The layer acts as one of the electrode regions, usually the collector
- examining magistrate — (in some countries with inquisitorial legal systems) a judge who investigates cases and decides whether there is a case to answer in court
- explicit parallelism — A feature of a programming language for a parallel processing system which allows or forces the programmer to annotate his program to indicate which parts should be executed as independent parallel tasks. This is obviously more work for the programmer than a system with implicit parallelism (where the system decides automatically which parts to run in parallel) but may allow higher performance.
- external respiration — exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide across external or respiratory surfaces, as gills or lungs, in multicellular organisms
- fair-trade agreement — an agreement or contract between a manufacturer and a retailer to sell a branded or trademarked product at no less than a specific price: legally prohibited after 1975.
- federal constitution — Constitution of the United States.
- federal reserve bank — a U.S. federal banking system that is under the control of a central board of governors (Federal Reserve Board) with a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) in each of 12 districts and that has wide powers in controlling credit and the flow of money as well as in performing other functions, as regulating and supervising its member banks.
- federal reserve note — a form of paper money issued by a Federal Reserve Bank.
- federation of malaya — a federation of the nine Malay States of the Malay Peninsula and two of the Straits Settlements (Malacca and Penang): formed in 1948: became part of the British Commonwealth in 1957 and joined Malaysia in 1963
- finite state grammar — a simplified form of transformational grammar devised by Noam Chomsky
- fission-track dating — the dating of samples of minerals by comparing the tracks in them by fission fragments of the uranium nuclei they contain, before and after irradiation by neutrons
- five-star restaurant — a restaurant which has been given the top star-rating
- fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
- fixed-rate financing — a loan system in which the amount paid back does not fluctuate according to interest rated
- forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
- forty-ninth parallel — an informal name for the Canadian border with the USA, which is in part delineated by the parallel line of latitude at 49°N
- fractionating column — a long vertical cylinder used in fractional distillation, in which internal reflux enables separation of high and low boiling fractions to take place
- frame check sequence — (communications) (FCS) The extra characters added to a frame for error detection and correction(?). FCS is used in X.25, HDLC, Frame Relay, and other data link layer protocols.
- frankfurt horizontal — Craniometry. the plane established when right and left poria and left orbitale are in the same horizontal plane.
- free-range parenting — Informal. a style of child rearing in which parents allow their children to move about without constant adult supervision, aimed at instilling independence and self-reliance.
- freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
- general headquarters — the headquarters of the commanding officer of a large military force. Abbreviation: GHQ, G.H.Q.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
- general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
- general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
- generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
- generative semantics — a theory of generative grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can then be derived using only one set of rules that relate underlying meaning and surface form rather than separate sets of semantic and syntactic rules.
- go against the grain — If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it, because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles.
- grade school teacher — a teacher in a grade school
- grand right and left — a figure called in square dancing in which partners face each other, forming a small circle, and then advance around the circle by extending alternating right and left hands to pull past each new person until they reach their partners again.
- grand unified theory — a possible future quantum field theory that would encompass both the electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics. Abbreviation: GUT.
- graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware) Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
- gravimetric analysis — analysis by weight.
- gravitational radius — Schwarzschild radius.