17-letter words containing a, m, y, e
- oyer and terminer — (in some U.S. states) any of various higher criminal courts.
- palaeoclimatology — the study of climates of the geological past
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- parachute payment — a payment made to alleviate hardship resulting from a sudden loss of income
- parathyroidectomy — the excision of a parathyroid gland.
- parcplace systems — (company) A company spun-off from Xerox PARC that developed the original version of VisualWorks.
- parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
- parliamentary law — the body of rules, usages, and precedents that governs proceedings of legislative and deliberative assemblies.
- pay someone's way — to pay someone's share of the expenses
- paymaster general — a government minister responsible for making payments by government departments
- phantom pregnancy — the occurrence of signs of pregnancy, such as enlarged abdomen and absence of menstruation, when no embryo is present, due to hormonal imbalance
- phenylformic acid — benzoic acid.
- physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
- physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
- political economy — a social science dealing with political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on social institutions.
- polymorphonuclear — (of a leukocyte) having a lobulate nucleus.
- popular etymology — folk etymology.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- powder metallurgy — the art or science of manufacturing useful articles by compacting metal and other powders in a die, followed by sintering.
- primary dentition — the deciduous dentition
- primary education — junior, elementary schooling
- primary intention — Logic. See under intention (def 5a).
- primary processes — the generally unorganized mental activity characteristic of the unconscious and occurring in dreams, fantasies, and related processes.
- primary qualities — any of the qualities inherent in an object, namely quantity, extent, figure, solidity, and motion or rest.
- primary structure — Biochemistry. the basic sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide or protein.
- primary-intention — an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- purely and simply — You use purely and simply to emphasize that the thing you are mentioning is the only thing involved.
- quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
- radial keratotomy — a surgical technique for correcting nearsightedness by making a series of spokelike incisions in the cornea to change its shape and focusing properties.
- railway timetable — a list of railway journeys arranged according to the time when they begin and end
- read-write memory — a type of computer memory that you can write to as well as read from
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- relative humidity — the amount of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount that the air could hold at the given temperature; the ratio of the actual water vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure. Abbreviation: RH, rh.
- relative majority — the excess of votes or seats won by the winner of an election over the runner-up when no candidate or party has more than 50 per cent
- repertory company — repertory (def 2).
- rich site summary — (web, standard) (RSS, blog, feed) A family of standard web document types containing regularly updated, short articles or news items. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds", "news feeds" or just "feeds") can be read with an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or Feedly. These are sometimes called "aggregators" because they combine multiple RSS feeds which the user can browse as a single list. The RSS reader tracks which articles the use has read, and is typically set to show only new articles, hence the idea of a "feed" or flow of new items. Most RSS feeds are based on RDF. RDF is a structured document format for describing textual resources such as news articles available on the web. RSS originally stood for "RDF Site Summary" as it was designed to provide short descriptions of (changes to) a website. Because it provides a standard way to deliver, or "syndicate", news or updates from one site to another, RSS is sometimes expanded as "Really Simple Syndication". It is closely associated with blogs, most of which provide an RSS feed of articles.
- role-playing game — a game in which participants adopt the roles of imaginary characters in an adventure under the direction of a Game Master.
- safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
- scentless mayweed — a similar and related plant, Matricaria maritima, with scentless leaves
- seaweed marquetry — marquetry having the form of symmetrical, foliate scrolls, as on English cabinetwork of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
- semi-permeability — permeable only to certain small molecules: a semipermeable membrane.
- semimicroanalysis — any analytical method in which the weight of the sample is between 10 and 100 milligrams.
- shuttle diplomacy — diplomatic negotiations carried out by a mediator who travels back and forth between the negotiating parties.
- socioeconomically — of, relating to, or signifying the combination or interaction of social and economic factors: socioeconomic study; socioeconomic status.
- sodium pyroborate — borax1 .
- sodium salicylate — a white, crystalline compound, C 7 H 5 NaO 3 , soluble in water, alcohol, and glycerol: used in medicine as an analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory, and as a preservative.
- south sea company — a British joint stock company that traded in South America in the 18th century. The South Sea Company took over the national debt in return for a monopoly of trade with the South Seas, causing feverish speculation in their stocks, and a financial crash in 1720 (the South Sea Bubble)
- spectrum analyser — an instrument that splits an input waveform into its frequency components, which are then displayed
- spectrum analysis — the determination of the constitution or condition of bodies and substances by means of the spectra they produce.