18-letter words containing a, e, n, s, i, l
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.
- phosphatidylserine — any of a class of phospholipids occurring in biological membranes and fats
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- plains grasshopper — a large, destructive short-horned grasshopper, Brachystola magna, of the western U.S., marked by pinkish hind wings.
- plate-glass window — a window that has glass which has been formed by rolling
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- pleasure principle — an automatic mental drive or instinct seeking to avoid pain and to obtain pleasure.
- 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.
- polynesian tattler — a sandpiper, H. incanus, native to the Pacific coastal regions
- population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
- population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
- post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- postmillenarianism — postmillennialism.
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
- prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
- presenile dementia — a form of dementia, of unknown cause, starting before a person is old
- 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.
- presentation layer — (networking) The second highest layer (layer 6) in the OSI seven layer model. Performs functions such as text compression, code or format conversion to try to smooth out differences between hosts. Allows incompatible processes in the application layer to communicate via the session layer. Documents: ITU Rec. X.226 (ISO 8823), ITU Rec. X.216 (ISO 8822).
- presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
- presumption of law — a presumption based upon a policy of law or a general rule and not upon the facts or evidence in an individual case.
- prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- pull one's head in — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
- radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
- range of stability — the angle to the perpendicular through which a vessel may be heeled without losing the ability to right itself.
- regional enteritis — Crohn's disease.
- registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
- regular expression — 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- residential school — (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements
- residual magnetism — remanence.
- resistance plasmid — any of a group of bacterial plasmids carrying genetic information that provide resistance to antibiotic drugs: some resistance plasmids are able to transfer themselves, and hence resistance, during conjugation
- resistance welding — welding utilizing pressure and heat that is generated in the pieces to be welded by resistance to an electric current.
- restraining circle — any of three circles on the floor of a basketball court used for jump balls: other players must remain outside the circle during a jump ball
- resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
- revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
- rhode island white — one of a dual-purpose American breed of chickens having white feathers and a rose comb.
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- rotary clothesline — an apparatus of radiating spokes that support lines on which clothes are hung to dry
- 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.
- safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
- saint clare assisi — 1194–1253, Italian nun: founder of the Franciscan order of nuns.