A UK university offering distance learning taught courses to people without formal academic qualifications, teaching being by correspondence and online with mostly optional tutorials and for some courses compulsory summer schools. Access to postgraduate research is selective and is primarily taught on campus using traditional methods.

(idiomatic, chiefly UK and Ireland) The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education.

(theology) The idea, particularly in Christianity, that an opportunity to follow the deity, e.g. Jesus, will be an option at the time of death.

(philosophy, metaphysics) A universe in which all of the actions of matter and energy operate as reactions according to predetermined rules set down by a creator, like the movements of a clock.

plural of clockwork universe

A measure of time that conforms, within a close approximation, to the mean diurnal rotation of the Earth and serves as the basis of civil timekeeping.

(business) All the risks that could affect an entity.

A religion which encourages theological liberalism and an individual search for truth and the adherents of which draw on many different theological sources and have a wide range of beliefs and practices.

A coupling that allows different parts of a machine not in line with each other some freedom of movement at the same time as transmitting rotary motion.

plural of risk universe