16-letter words containing a, l, e, n, p, r
- parallel parking — parking along curb in line with other vehicles
- parallel sailing — sailing along a parallel of latitude.
- parallelepipedon — a prism with six faces, all parallelograms.
- paraprofessional — a person trained to assist a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or other professional, but not licensed to practice in the profession.
- parliament hinge — a butt hinge the knuckle of which protrudes from the door so that the door when fully opened stands away from the wall.
- parole violation — an illegal act or offence that breaches the conditions of a prisoner's parole
- partial ordering — a relation defined on a set, having the properties that each element is in relation to itself, the relation is transitive, and if two elements are in relation to each other, the two elements are equal.
- parts of lindsey — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
- pass-band filter — band-pass filter
- peasants' revolt — the first great popular rebellion in English history (1381), caused by the imposition of an unpopular poll tax: it lasted less than a month and failed as a social revolution
- pectoralis minor — the smaller of the two large chest muscles that assist in movements of the shoulder and upper arm
- pelican crossing — place to cross road
- pencil and paper — An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based technology include improved "write-once" update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit coloured pigment. All these devices require an operator skilled at so-called "handwriting" technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
- pencil sharpener — tool for sharpening pencils to a point
- peninsular state — Florida (used as a nickname).
- perchloromethane — carbon tetrachloride.
- peregrine falcon — a globally distributed falcon, Falco peregrinus, much used in falconry because of its swift flight: several subspecies are endangered.
- perpendicularity — vertical; straight up and down; upright.
- perpetual motion — the motion of a theoretical mechanism that, without any losses due to friction or other forms of dissipation of energy, would continue to operate indefinitely at the same rate without any external energy being applied to it.
- personal details — details about a person such as their name and address
- personal effects — belongings
- personal hygiene — bodily cleanliness
- personal liberty — the liberty of an individual to do his or her will freely except for those restraints imposed by law to safeguard the physical, moral, political, and economic welfare of others.
- personal pension — a private pension scheme in which an individual contributes part of his or her salary to a financial institution, which invests it so that a lump sum is available on retirement; this is then used to purchase an annuity
- personal pronoun — any one of the pronouns used to refer to the speaker, or to one or more to or about whom or which he or she is speaking, as, in English, I, we, you, he, she, it, they.
- personal shopper — a person, often a store employee, whose job is to assist shoppers in selecting clothing or other merchandise.
- personal stylist — a person employed by a rich or famous client to offer advice on clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of personal appearance
- personal trainer — a person who works one-on-one with a client to plan or implement an exercise or fitness regimen.
- personal tuition — private tuition
- personality cult — deliberately cultivated adulation of a person, esp a political leader
- personality test — an instrument, as a questionnaire or series of standardized tasks, used to measure personality characteristics or to discover personality disorders.
- personality type — a cluster of personality traits commonly occurring together
- personnel agency — an agency for placing employable persons in jobs; employment agency.
- peter pan collar — a close-fitting flat or rolled collar with rounded ends that meet in front of a high, round neckline.
- petrol rationing — a scheme rationing the amount of petrol that an individual is allowed to purchase
- phalansterianism — a system by which society would be reorganized into units comprising their own social and industrial elements; Fourierism.
- pineal apparatus — a median outgrowth of the roof of the diencephalon in vertebrates that in some develops into the pineal eye and in others into the pineal gland.
- planetary nebula — an expanding shell of thin ionized gas that is ejected from and surrounds a hot, dying star of about the same mass as the sun; the gas absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the central star and reemits it as visible light by the process of fluorescence.
- platform-balance — a scale with a platform for holding the items to be weighed.
- platoon sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer in a platoon, equivalent to sergeant first class.
- play one's cards — to carry out one's plans; take action (esp in the phrase play one's cards right)
- pleasure-seeking — always looking for pleasure
- polar coordinate — 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)
- polarizing angle — the law that light will receive maximum polarization from a reflecting surface when it is incident to the surface at an angle (angle of polarization or polarizing angle) having a tangent equal to the index of refraction of the surface.
- polyhedral angle — a configuration consisting of the lateral faces of a polyhedron around one of its vertices. The portion of a pyramid including one of its points is such a configuration.
- porcelain enamel — a glass coating, made to adhere to a metal or another enamel by fusion.
- potential energy — the energy of a body or a system with respect to the position of the body or the arrangement of the particles of the system.
- practical reason — (in Kantian ethics) reason applied to the problem of action and choice, especially in ethical matters.
- pre-solicitation — the act of soliciting.
- precontemplation — the act of contemplating; thoughtful observation.