18-letter words containing a, g, e
- palm beach gardens — a city in SE Florida, near North Palm Beach.
- palmer archipelago — a group of islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, off the NW coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.
- parachute regiment — an airborne regiment of an army
- parallel computing — parallel processing
- parallel importing — the importing of certain goods, esp pharmaceutical drugs, by dealers who undersell local manufacturers
- parallelogram rule — a rule for finding the resultant of two vectors by constructing a parallelogram with two adjacent sides representing the magnitudes and directions of the vectors, the diagonal through the point of intersection of the vectors representing their resultant
- paraurethral gland — any of a group of vestigial glands located in the posterior wall of the urethra in women.
- partial-vegetarian — a person who eats mostly plant foods, dairy products, and eggs, and occasionally chicken, fish, and red meat.
- particular average — a loss at sea, as through accident or negligence, that is borne solely by the owner of the lost property. Abbreviation: P.A.
- passing-out parade — a ceremonial parade of cadets who have completed their training
- passive-aggressive — denoting or pertaining to a personality type or behavior marked by the expression of negative emotions in passive, indirect ways, as through manipulation or noncooperation: a passive-aggressive employee who often misses deadlines.
- pattern bargaining — a collective bargaining technique in which contract terms in one settlement are used as models to be imposed on other negotiating parties within an industry.
- peacekeeping force — a force designated to the maintenance of peace, esp the prevention of further fighting between hostile forces in an area
- pedal steel guitar — an oblong, floor-mounted electrified guitar, usually having ten strings, fretted with a steel bar and producing a wailing sound that is modulated by use of a foot pedal.
- pemphigus vulgaris — a potentially fatal blistering skin disease, characterized by large blisters on the skin, mucous membranes of the mouth, genitals, intestines, etc, which eventually rupture and form painful denuded areas from which critical amounts of bodily protein, fluid, and blood may be lost
- people trafficking — the practice of bringing immigrants into a country illegally
- percentile ranking — the percentage of scores that a particular score is greater than
- perceptual mapping — the use of a graph or map in the development of a new product, in which the proximity of consumers' images of the new product to those of an ideal product provide an indication of the new product's likely success
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- perennial ryegrass — any of several European grasses of the genus Lolium, as L. perenne (perennial ryegrass) grown for forage in the U.S.
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- personal organizer — a small notebook with sections for personal information, as dates and addresses.
- phase-shift keying — (communications) (PSK) A digital modulation scheme that conveys data by changing the phase of a carrier wave. The data can either determine the absolute phase relative to the unmodulated carrier or reference signal ("coherent phase-shift keying", CPSK) or the change in phase ("differential phase-shift keying", DPSK). The number of different phases used determines the amount of data that can be transmitted in each cycle. Each cycle can be considered to constitute one "symbol", e.g. with two possible phases, each cycle carries one bit. The more phases that are used, the less tollerant to noise the transmissions becomes. Alternatives to PSK are amplitude-shift keying (ASK) and frequency-shift keying (FSK).
- photochemical smog — air pollution containing ozone and other reactive chemical compounds formed by the action of sunlight on nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, especially those in automobile exhaust.
- 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.
- phytohemagglutinin — a lectin, obtained from the red kidney bean, that binds to the membranes of T cells and stimulates metabolic activity, cell division, etc.
- pig-tailed macaque — a forest-dwelling southeast Asian macaque, Macaca nemestrina, having a short, curled tail, colonized for animal behavior studies.
- plains grasshopper — a large, destructive short-horned grasshopper, Brachystola magna, of the western U.S., marked by pinkish hind wings.
- plane trigonometry — the branch of trigonometry dealing with plane triangles.
- plate-glass window — a window that has glass which has been formed by rolling
- play silly buggers — to fool around and waste time
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- point d'angleterre — a bobbin lace in which the design is worked out with either a needle or bobbin.
- point-bearing pile — a pile depending on the soil or rock beneath its foot for support.
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
- portage la prairie — a city in S Manitoba, in S central Canada, W of Winnipeg.
- portuguese guinean — of or relating to Portuguese Guinea, a former name for Guinea-Bissau, or its inhabitants
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
- postmaster general — the executive head of the postal system of a country.
- potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
- 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.
- prepare the ground — make conditions ready
- prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
- press photographer — a photographer who works for a newspaper, magazine, etc
- prestidigitization — /pres`t*-di"j*-ti:-zay"sh*n/ 1. A term coined by Daniel Klein <[email protected]> for the act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.