15-letter words containing a, b, u
- parachute brake — a parachute opened horizontally from the tail of an airplane upon landing, used as an aid in braking. Also called parabrake. Compare drogue parachute (def 2).
- parti québécois — (in Canada) a political party in Quebec, formed in 1968 and originally advocating the separation of Quebec from the rest of the country
- paurometabolous — designating or of a group of insect orders, as orthopterans or hemipterans, in which metamorphosis to the adult state from the juvenile state is gradual and without any sudden, radical change of body form
- perfluorocarbon — a fluorocarbon consisting only of fluorine and carbon atoms
- peruvian balsam — Peru balsam.
- pick up the tab — If you pick up the tab, you pay a bill on behalf of a group of people or provide the money that is needed for something.
- picture library — A picture library is a collection of photographs that is held by a particular company or organization. Newspapers or publishers can pay to use the photographs in their publications.
- platinum blonde — a person, especially a girl or woman, whose hair is of a pale blond or silver color, usually colored artificially by bleaching or dyeing.
- plug compatible — of or relating to computers or peripheral devices that are functionally equivalent to, and may be substituted for, other models.
- plug-compatible — of or relating to computers or peripheral devices that are functionally equivalent to, and may be substituted for, other models.
- plumbaginaceous — belonging to the Plumbaginaceae, the leadwort family of plants.
- plumber's snake — snake (def 3a).
- prism binocular — Usually, prism binoculars. Optics. binocular (def 1).
- probit equation — A probit equation is used to quantify the relationship between the concentration of a dangerous material and its effect on people.
- procrustean bed — a plan or scheme to produce uniformity or conformity by arbitrary or violent methods.
- pseudo-bohemian — living a wandering or vagabond life, as a Gypsy.
- public footpath — a footpath along which the public has right of way
- public lavatory — a public toilet
- public nuisance — act, thing: anti-social
- public speaking — the act of delivering speeches in public.
- publicity agent — A publicity agent is a person whose job is to make sure that a large number of people know about a person, show, or event so that they are successful.
- pulmobranchiate — possessing a pulmobranch
- put sb to death — If someone is put to death, they are executed.
- put sb to shame — If someone puts you to shame, they make you feel ashamed because they do something much better than you do.
- put years on sb — If you say that something such as an experience or a way of dressing has put years on someone, you mean that it has made them look or feel much older.
- quadruple bucky — Obsolete. 1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
- quantifiability — (uncountable) The condition of being quantifiable.
- quarter binding — a style of bookbinding in which the spine is leather and the sides are cloth or paper.
- quarter blanket — a horse blanket, usually placed under a saddle or harness and extending to the horse's tail.
- quasi-objective — something that one's efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish; purpose; goal; target: the objective of a military attack; the objective of a fund-raising drive.
- queen substance — a pheromone secreted from the mandibular glands of a queen honeybee and smelled, eaten, and absorbed by the worker bees, having the effect of preventing them from producing or rearing rival queens.
- queensland blue — a pumpkin with a bluish skin
- questionability — of doubtful propriety, honesty, morality, respectability, etc.: questionable activities; in questionable taste.
- radio sono-buoy — a buoy equipped to detect underwater noises and transmit them by radio
- ram-air turbine — a small air-driven turbine fitted to an aircraft to provide power in the event of a failure of the normal systems
- ratafia biscuit — a macaroon.
- rational number — a number that can be expressed exactly by a ratio of two integers.
- rayside-balfour — a town in S Ontario, in S Canada.
- reconstitutable — to constitute again; reconstruct; recompose.
- retail business — a firm which sells goods to individual customers
- reuben sandwich — a grilled sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut on rye bread.
- right-hand buoy — a distinctive buoy marking the side of a channel regarded as the right, or starboard, side.
- rightabout-face — a turning directly about so as to face in the opposite direction
- robert guiscard — Robert [French raw-ber] /French rɔˈbɛr/ (Show IPA), (Robert de Hauteville) c1015–85, Norman conqueror in Italy.
- rotary debugger — (Commodore) Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in many decorator colours, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage.
- rough bluegrass — a grass, Poa trivialis, native to Eurasia and naturalized in North America, where it is used in mixtures for lawns and pasturage.
- rough breathing — the symbol (ʿ) used in the writing of Greek to indicate aspiration of the initial vowel or of the ρ (rho) over which it is placed.
- roundaboutation — circumlocution
- roundaboutility — roundaboutness
- rubaiyat stanza — a quatrain patterned after those in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, of iambic pentameter and rhyming aaba.