18-letter words containing a, e, c, l
- physical chemistry — the branch of chemistry dealing with the relations between the physical properties of substances and their chemical composition and transformations.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- physical geography — the branch of geography concerned with natural features and phenomena of the earth's surface, as landforms, drainage features, climates, soils, and vegetation.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- physical therapist — sb who performs physiotherapy
- pig-tailed macaque — a forest-dwelling southeast Asian macaque, Macaca nemestrina, having a short, curled tail, colonized for animal behavior studies.
- pilotless aircraft — an aircraft equipped for operation by radio or by robot control, without a human pilot aboard; drone.
- plane of incidence — a plane determined by a given ray, incident on a surface, and the normal at the point where the incident ray strikes the surface.
- play cat and mouse — Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- play the race card — to introduce the subject of race into a public discussion, esp to gain a strategic advantage
- pleasure principle — an automatic mental drive or instinct seeking to avoid pain and to obtain pleasure.
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- plumber's merchant — a shop or business that sells things needed for the job of installing and repairing pipes, fixtures, etc, for water, drainage, and gas
- policeman's helmet — a Himalayan balsaminaceous plant, Impatiens glandulifera, with large purplish-pink flowers, introduced into Britain
- political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
- political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
- politically-minded — (of a person or group of people) interested in the way power is achieved and used in a country or society (through government, policy-making, etc)
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- population balance — A population balance is a model showing particle sizes during a grinding process, which is used when designing a process.
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
- potassium chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
- potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
- pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
- prairie crab apple — a tree, Malus ioensis, of the rose family, native to the central U.S., having downy branchlets, white or rose-tinted flowers, and round, waxy, greenish fruit.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- precipitable water — the total water vapor contained in a unit vertical column of the atmosphere.
- predicate calculus — predicate logic
- preparatory school — a private or parochial secondary school, especially one boarding its students and providing a college-preparatory education.
- present participle — Grammar. a participle form, in English having the suffix -ing, denoting repetition or duration of an activity or event: used as an adjective, as in the growing weeds, and in forming progressive verb forms, as in The weeds are growing.
- principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
- principal meridian — a meridian line accurately laid out to serve as the reference meridian in land survey
- proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
- provascular tissue — procambium.
- pseudo-socialistic — of or relating to socialists or socialism.
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- put the clock back — to regress
- pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
- quality controller — a person responsible for checking that the goods or services produced by an organization are of an acceptable standard
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- quarterlife crisis — a crisis that may be experienced in one's twenties, involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one's life
- quasi-metaphysical — pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics.
- rabbit-foot clover — a plant, Trifolium arvense, having trifoliate leaves with narrow leaflets and fuzzy, cylindrical, grayish-pink flower heads.
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races