17-letter words containing a, e, o, n, s
- perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
- petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
- photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
- pillion passenger — a person who travels in a seat or place behind the rider of a motorcycle, scooter, horse, etc
- play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
- point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- point reyes lilac — a prostrate shrub, Ceanothus gloriosus, of southern California, having leathery, roundish leaves and purplish or deep-blue flowers.
- point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- polar coordinates — Usually, polar coordinates. one of two coordinates used to locate a point in a plane by the length of its radius vector and the angle this vector makes with the polar axis (polar angle)
- polioencephalitis — a disease characterized by inflammation of the gray matter of the brain.
- political science — a social science dealing with political institutions and with the principles and conduct of government.
- poor man's orange — a grapefruit
- portuguese guinea — former name of Guinea-Bissau.
- post-and-rail tea — (in the 19th century) a coarse tea in which floating particles resembled a post-and-rail fence
- post-depositional — removal from an office or position.
- postal stationery — an envelope, postal card, wrapper, or aérogramme, with the stamp printed directly on the paper.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- postural drainage — a therapy for clearing congested lungs by placing the patient in a position for drainage by gravity, often accompanied by percussion with hollowed hands.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- prairie provinces — the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, which lie in the N Great Plains region of North America: the chief wheat and petroleum producing area of Canada
- pre-investigation — the act or process of investigating or the condition of being investigated.
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- precision casting — investment casting.
- preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.
- premonstratensian — a member of a religious order founded at Prémontré in N France in 1120 by St Norbert (about 1080–1134)
- presentation copy — a copy of a book given by the publisher or author
- presentationalism — a style of production in which the audience is addressed directly with songs, skits, exposition, etc., and no attempt is made at realism.
- press association — an organization formed for the purpose of gathering news for transmittal to its members. Compare news agency.
- pressure drawdown — Pressure drawdown is the difference between the reservoir pressure and the flowing wellbore pressure, which drives fluids from the reservoir into the wellbore.
- private ownership — the fact of being owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by the state or a public body
- production values — the quality of a media production (such as a film) in regards to elements such as colours, quality, style, etc
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- professional foul — In football, if a player commits a professional foul, they deliberately do something which is against the rules in order to prevent another player from scoring a goal.
- program statement — a single instruction in a computer program
- project assurance — The process of specifying the support system: techniques, internal standards, measurements, tools, and training for a project; counselling the project team in the application of these elements and monitoring the adherence to the standards.
- prolonged-release — A prolonged-release drug delivers a dose of a medication over an extended period of time.
- protocol analyser — (communications, hardware, networking, testing, tool) Any device that captures and interprets the network traffic between two or more connected computer systems. The traffic can then be decoded so that it is possible to see what processes are occurring. By examining the flow of traffic, protocol analysers can be used to find out where problems (such as bottlenecks or the failure of a network device) are on a LAN. Advanced protocol analysers can also provide statistics on the traffic that can help to identify trends that may in future lead to further problems with the network.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
- put on a pedestal — an architectural support for a column, statue, vase, or the like.
- put one's hand to — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- pyroligneous acid — a yellowish, acidic, water-soluble liquid, containing about 10 percent acetic acid, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood: used for smoking meats.
- pythagorean scale — the major scale as derived acoustically by Pythagoras from the perfect fifth.
- quantity surveyor — A quantity surveyor is a person who calculates the cost and amount of materials and workers needed for a job such as building a house or a road.
- rack one's brains — to strain in mental effort, esp to remember something or to find the solution to a problem
- radio-transparent — transparent to radiation; invisible in x-ray photographs and under fluoroscopy (opposed to radiopaque).