12-letter words containing a, f, t
- paper profit — an unrealized profit due to the appreciation of something owned but not yet sold.
- parrot fever — psittacosis.
- parvifoliate — (of plants) having small leaves in comparison with the size of the stem
- passionfruit — any edible fruit of a passionflower, as the maypop.
- past perfect — pluperfect.
- patent cliff — a potential sharp drop in sales and revenue for a company when one of its patents expires: the looming patent cliffs faced by pharmaceutical firms.
- patent flour — a fine grade of flour, consisting chiefly of the inner part of the endosperm.
- peak traffic — traffic at the time it is most busy
- pectoral fin — (in fishes) either of a pair of fins usually situated behind the head, one on each side, and corresponding to the forelimbs of higher vertebrates.
- perfect game — a baseball game in which the same player pitches throughout the full game without allowing any player of the opposing team to reach first base by a base hit, base on balls, error, or any other means. Compare no-hitter.
- perfect ream — a standard quantity of paper, consisting of 20 quires or 500 sheets (formerly 480 sheets), or 516 sheets (printer's ream or perfect ream)
- perfect year — the lunisolar calendar used by Jews, as for determining religious holidays, that is reckoned from 3761 b.c. and was established by Hillel II in the 4th century a.d., the calendar year consisting of 353 days (defective year) 354 days (regular year) or 355 days (perfect year or abundant year) and containing 12 months: Tishri, Heshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar, Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, and Elul, with the 29-day intercalary month of Adar Sheni added after Adar seven times in every 19-year cycle in order to adjust the calendar to the solar cycle. The Jewish ecclesiastical year begins with Nisan and the civil year with Tishri.
- perfectation — the action or process of becoming or causing to become perfect or complete
- perforations — the holes punched that allow individual stamps, coupons, etc to be easily separated
- performative — (of an expression or statement) performing an act by the very fact of being uttered, as with the expression “I promise,” that performs the act of promising.
- petaliferous — bearing or having petals.
- petrifaction — the act or process of petrifying; the state of being petrified.
- petrifactive — having the ability to turn substances into stone
- placentiform — shaped like a placenta, with a flat rounded form
- plastic flow — deformation of a material that remains rigid under stresses of less than a certain intensity but that behaves under severer stresses approximately as a Newtonian fluid.
- plastic foam — expanded plastic.
- platform bed — a bed, originating in Scandinavia in the 1930s, consisting of a simple shallow box for holding a mattress situated on a slightly recessed pedestal.
- platform car — a railroad freight car having no enclosing sides or top; a flatcar.
- play it safe — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
- pontificates — the office or term of office of a pontiff.
- pontificator — the office or term of office of a pontiff.
- port of call — a port visited briefly by a ship, usually to take on or discharge passengers and cargo or to undergo repairs.
- portal frame — a frame, usually of steel, consisting of two uprights and a cross beam at the top: the simplest structural unit in a framed building or a doorway
- post-fascist — of or relating to various right-wing political parties in Europe which espouse a modified form of fascism and which take part in constitutional politics
- postfracture — taking place after a fracture
- potato flour — a type of flour made from potatoes
- poultry farm — place where fowl are bred
- power factor — (in an electrical circuit) the ratio of the power dissipated to the product of the input volts times amps
- prebreakfast — occurring before breakfast, of or pertaining to the period before breakfast
- prefabricate — to fabricate or construct beforehand.
- prefectorial — of, relating to, or characteristic of a prefect: prefectorial powers.
- preferential — of, relating to, or of the nature of preference: preferential policies.
- prefloration — the internal arrangement of a flower-bud's petals and sepals before it opens
- prefoliation — the arrangement of leaves within a vegetative bud
- preformation — previous formation.
- preformative — a prefixture in Semitic languages
- preformatted — the shape and size of a book as determined by the number of times the original sheet has been folded to form the leaves. Compare duodecimo, folio (def 2), octavo, quarto.
- preformulate — to describe an active pharmaceutical ingredient chemically
- prime factor — any number in the set of prime numbers that is also a factor of a given integer
- private life — the social or family life or personal relationships of an individual, esp of a person in the public eye, such as a politician or celebrity
- professorate — the office or the period of service of a professor.
- protest flag — a flag hoisted by a racing yacht to advise the judges of a violation of the rules by another yacht.
- puffa jacket — a warm quilted and padded jacket
- purification — to make pure; free from anything that debases, pollutes, adulterates, or contaminates: to purify metals.
- putrefaction — the act or process of putrefying; the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter by bacteria and fungi that results in obnoxiously odorous products; rotting.