15-letter words containing a, k, i
- nickel carbonyl — a colorless or yellow, volatile, water-insoluble, poisonous, flammable liquid, Ni(CO) 4 , obtained by the reaction of nickel and carbon monoxide, and used for nickel-plating.
- nickel-and-dime — of little or no importance; trivial; petty: a nickel-and-dime business that soon folded.
- not a dickybird — not a word; nothing
- nutcracker chin — a strong-looking chin
- official strike — a collective stoppage of work by part or all of the workforce of an organization with the approval of the trade union concerned. The stoppage may be accompanied by the payment of strike pay by the trade union concerned
- oil tanker pier — An oil tanker pier is a structure over water where oil tankers can stop and load or unload.
- on a knife-edge — To be on a knife-edge means to be in a situation in which nobody knows what is going to happen next, or in which one thing is just as likely to happen as another.
- orange milkweed — butterfly weed (def 1).
- outward-looking — looking beyond oneself; open-minded and reaching out to other people, organizations, etc
- ozark mountains — an eroded plateau in S Missouri, N Arkansas, and NE Oklahoma. Area: about 130 000 sq km (50 000 sq miles)
- package holiday — a holiday arranged by a travel company in which your travel and accommodation are booked for you
- packet-switched — packet switching
- packing density — a measure of the amount of data that can be held by unit length of a storage medium, such as magnetic tape
- parking offence — the act of leaving your car somewhere illegally
- parkinson's law — the statement, expressed facetiously as if a law of physics, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
- passive smoking — the inhaling of cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke of others, especially by a nonsmoker in an enclosed area.
- patchwork quilt — cover sewn from patches of cloth
- peak experience — a high point in the life of a self-actualizer, during which the person feels ecstatic and more alive and whole than is usual.
- peak production — the maximum production
- phenakistoscope — an early form of a zoetrope in which figures are depicted in different poses around the edge of a disc. When the disc is spun, and the figures observed through the apertures around the edge of the disc, they appear to be moving
- phenylketonuria — an inherited disease due to faulty metabolism of phenylalanine, characterized by phenylketones in the urine and usually first noted by signs of mental retardation in infancy.
- pick and choose — to choose or select from among a group: to pick a contestant from the audience.
- pick up the tab — If you pick up the tab, you pay a bill on behalf of a group of people or provide the money that is needed for something.
- pick-and-shovel — marked by drudgery; laborious: the pick-and-shovel work necessary to get a political campaign underway.
- pickaback plane — a powered airplane designed to be carried aloft by another airplane and released in flight.
- pickaback plant — piggyback plant.
- pickwick papers — (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) a novel (1837) by Charles Dickens.
- pig, run like a — To run very slowly on given hardware, said of software. Distinct from hog.
- piggyback plant — a plant, Tolmiea menziesii, of the saxifrage family, native to western North America, that produces new plants at the base of its broad, hairy leaves and that is popular as a houseplant.
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- planet-stricken — believed to be adversely affected mentally or physically by the planets
- platform ticket — a pass allowing a visitor to enter upon a railroad platform from which those not traveling are ordinarily excluded.
- play kissy-face — to engage in kissing, caressing, etc., esp. overtly or publicly
- point-and-click — of or denoting an interface with which the user typically interacts by using a mouse to move the cursor and then clicking on a screen object.
- police marksman — a police officer skilled in precision shooting, esp with a sniper rifle
- prairie breaker — breaker1 (def 6).
- prairie chicken — either of two North American gallinaceous birds of western prairies, Tympanuchus cupido (greater prairie chicken) or T. pallidicinctus (lesser prairie chicken) having rufous, brown, black, and white plumage.
- prekindergarten — a school or class for young children between the ages of four and six years.
- proximity talks — a diplomatic process whereby an impartial representative acts as go-between for two opposing parties who are willing to attend the same conference but unwilling to meet face to face
- public speaking — the act of delivering speeches in public.
- pullman kitchen — a kitchenette, often recessed into a wall and concealed by double doors or a screen.
- quick-and-dirty — Informal. slipshod.
- quotation marks — one of the marks used to indicate the beginning and end of a quotation, in English usually shown as “ at the beginning and ” at the end, or, for a quotation within a quotation, of single marks of this kind, as “He said, ‘I will go.’ ” Frequently, especially in Great Britain, single marks are used instead of double, the latter being then used for a quotation within a quotation.
- rack-and-pinion — of or relating to a mechanism in which a rack engages a pinion: rack-and-pinion steering.
- railway network — a system of intersecting rail routes
- raw milk cheese — cheese or a cheese made with unpasteurized milk
- record-breaking — top, most successful
- red-back spider — a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, of Australia and New Zealand, related to the black widow spider and having a bright red stripe on the back.
- red-tailed hawk — a North American hawk, Buteo jamaicensis, dark brown above, whitish with black streaking below, and having a reddish-brown tail.
- regulatory risk — a risk to which private companies are subject, arising from the possibility of legislation or regulations that will affect business being adopted by a government