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21-letter words containing a, e, r, o, s, p

  • paper over the cracks — conceal flaws or problems
  • partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
  • pass the hat (around) — In British English, if you pass the hat around, you collect money from a group of people, for example in order to give someone a present. In American English, you just say pass the hat.
  • path coverage testing — (testing)   Testing a program by examining which lines of executable code are visited (as in code coverage testing) and also the ways of getting to each line of code and the subsequent sequence of execution. Path coverage testing is the most comprehensive type of testing that a test suite can provide. It can find more bugs, especially those that are caused by data coupling. However, path coverage is hard and usually only used for small and/or critical sections of code.
  • pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • person-to-person call — a call to a specified person; if that person cannot take the call there is no charge
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
  • phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
  • pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • poke borak at someone — to jeer at someone
  • polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
  • political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
  • pomp and circumstance — ceremony
  • populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
  • portable common loops — (PCL) A language which started out as an implementation of CommonLoops and turned into a portable CLOS implementation. Version 1992-08-28. It runs under Lucid Common LISP 4.0.1 and CMU Common LISP 16e.
  • portuguese man-of-war — any of several large, oceanic hydrozoans of the genus Physalia, having a large, bladderlike structure with a saillike crest by which they are buoyed up and from which dangle tentacles with stinging cells.
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
  • potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
  • poweropen association — An independent body established to promote, and test conformance with, the PowerOpen Environment (POE).
  • powersoft corporation — (company)   A leading vendor of client/server application development tools. In February 1994, Watcom became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Powersoft Corporation which merged with Sybase on 13 February 1995. In April 1995, the new company is the fastest growing top-ten software company and the seventh largest software company in the world. Headquarters: Concord, Massachusetts, USA.
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • pre-sales support rep — (job)   A person who supports sales by analysing customer requirements, proposing and demonstrating technical solutions, ensuring acceptable product installations, training users and providing initial technical support.
  • preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
  • premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
  • premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
  • probable maximum loss — Probable maximum loss is the maximum amount of loss that can be expected under normal circumstances.
  • professional services — (job)   A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
  • profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
  • progressive education — any of various reformist educational philosophies and methodologies since the late 1800s, applied especially to elementary schools, that reject the rote recitation and strict discipline of traditional, single-classroom teaching, favoring instead more stimulation of the individual pupil as well as group discussion, more informality in the classroom, a broader curriculum, and use of laboratories, gymnasiums, kitchens, etc., in the school.
  • protest demonstration — a manifestation of protest by public rally, parade, etc
  • protestant work ethic — work ethic.
  • pseudohermaphroditism — an individual having internal reproductive organs of one sex and external sexual characteristics resembling those of the other sex or being ambiguous in nature. Compare hermaphrodite (def 1).
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • psychopathic disorder — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a persistent disorder or disability of mind which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned
  • psychopharmacotherapy — the use of psychoactive drugs in the symptomatic treatment or control of mental disorders or psychiatric disease.
  • put sb out to pasture — If you say that someone is being put out to pasture, you mean they are no longer being employed because they are considered to be too old or no longer useful.
  • ralph roister doister — a play (1553?) by Nicholas Udall: the earliest known English comedy.
  • rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
  • reading comprehension — a text that students use to help them improve their reading skills, by reading it and answering questions relating to the text. Sometimes used as a test or examination of reading skills. A reading comprehension can be in the student's own or another language
  • real operating system — (operating system, abuse)   The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
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