16-letter words containing a, p, e, l, i
- 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 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 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
- persulfuric acid — Also called Caro's acid, permonosulfuric acid, peroxymonosulfuric acid, peroxysulfuric acid. a white, crystalline solid, H 2 SO 5 , used as an oxidizing agent for certain organic compounds.
- 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.
- phase modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier wave is modulated by changing its phase to transmit the amplitude and pitch of the signal.
- phenomenological — the study of phenomena.
- phenylethylamine — an amine that occurs naturally as a neurotransmitter in the brain, has properties similar to those of amphetamine, is an antidepressant, and is found in chocolate. Formula: C8H11N
- philip r. bagley — (person) A pioneer of computer document retrieval. See metadata.
- phillis wheatley — Phillis [fil-is] /ˈfɪl ɪs/ (Show IPA), 1753?–84, American poet, born in Africa; probably Senegal.
- photopolarimeter — a polarimeter that uses a photocell.
- phylogenetically — the development or evolution of a particular group of organisms.
- physical address — (memory management) The address presented to a computer's main memory in a virtual memory system, in contrast to the virtual address which is the address generated by the CPU. A memory management unit translates virtual addresses into physical addresses.
- physical fitness — good physical condition
- physical science — any of the natural sciences dealing with inanimate matter or with energy, as physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
- physical therapy — the treatment or management of physical disability, malfunction, or pain by exercise, massage, hydrotherapy, etc., without the use of medicines, surgery, or radiation.
- pigs in blankets — small frankfurters wrapped in dough and baked, served as an appetizer
- 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.
- pins and needles — a tingly, prickly sensation in a limb that is recovering from numbness.
- pitch-cone angle — (in a bevel gear) the apex angle of the truncated cone (pitch cone) which forms the reference surface on which the teeth of a bevel gear are cut
- place in the sun — (often initial capital letter) the star that is the central body of the solar system, around which the planets revolve and from which they receive light and heat: its mean distance from the earth is about 93 million miles (150 million km), its diameter about 864,000 miles (1.4 million km), and its mass about 330,000 times that of the earth; its period of surface rotation is about 26 days at its equator but longer at higher latitudes.
- place of worship — religious house: church, temple
- placement office — an office in a university that offers students careers advice and help to find employment
- plain-spokenness — the quality or characteristic of being plain-spoken
- plainclothes man — a detective or police officer who wears civilian clothes while on duty
- plaster of paris — calcined gypsum in white, powdery form, used as a base for gypsum plasters, as an additive of lime plasters, and as a material for making fine and ornamental casts: characterized by its ability to set rapidly when mixed with water.
- pleasure-seeking — always looking for pleasure
- plutarch's lives — (Parallel Lives) a collection (a.d. 105–15) by Plutarch of short biographies of the leading political figures of ancient Greece and Rome.
- pneumonic plague — a form of plague characterized by lung involvement.
- pocket billiards — pool2 (def 1).
- poiseuille's law — the law that the velocity of a liquid flowing through a capillary is directly proportional to the pressure of the liquid and the fourth power of the radius of the capillary and is inversely proportional to the viscosity of the liquid and the length of the capillary.
- poisoned chalice — If you refer to a job or an opportunity as a poisoned chalice, you mean that it seems to be very attractive but you believe it will lead to failure.
- 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.
- police constable — police officer
- policy statement — a declaration of the plans and intentions of an organization or government
- political system — a coordinated set of principles, laws, ideas, and procedures relating to a particular form of government, or the form of government itself: Democracy is a political system in which citizens govern themselves.
- polycondensation — formation of a polymer by chemical condensation with the elimination of a small molecule, such as water.
- polyvinyl acetal — any of the class of thermoplastic resins derived by the condensation of an aldehyde with polyvinyl alcohol.
- porcelain enamel — a glass coating, made to adhere to a metal or another enamel by fusion.