16-letter words containing a, p, l, e, r
- 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.
- philip r. bagley — (person) A pioneer of computer document retrieval. See metadata.
- photopolarimeter — a polarimeter that uses a photocell.
- 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 therapy — the treatment or management of physical disability, malfunction, or pain by exercise, massage, hydrotherapy, etc., without the use of medicines, surgery, or radiation.
- 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.
- place of worship — religious house: church, temple
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- player character — a character in a role-playing game or video game who is controlled by the person playing the game. Abbreviation: PC. Compare nonplayer character.
- pleasure steamer — a boat powered by steam, used for recreational purposes
- 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.
- pocket billiards — pool2 (def 1).
- 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.
- portable airtime — (communications, wireless) A wireless, digital communications system enabling user-to-user voice communication, "quicknotes", and alphanumeric messaging.
- portrait gallery — a gallery where pictures are displayed
- 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.
- powerpc platform — (architecture, standard) (PPCP, PReP - PowerPC Reference Platform, formerly CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform) An open system standard, designed by IBM, intended to ensure compatibility among PowerPC-based systems built by different companies. The PReP standard specifies the PCI bus, but will also support ISA, MicroChannel and PCMCIA. PReP-compliant systems will be able to run the Macintosh OS, OS/2, WorkplaceOS, AIX, Solaris, Taligent and Windows NT. IBM systems will (of course) be PReP-compliant. Apple's first PowerPC Macintoshes will not be compliant, but future ones may be.
- practical effect — Usually, practical effects. a special effect that is created live on the set of a film, using real-world objects.
- 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.
- predispositional — the fact or condition of being predisposed: a predisposition to think optimistically.
- premillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the Second Coming of Christ will precede the millennium.
- premillennialize — to support or believe in premillennialism.
- prerevolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- pressure flaking — a method of manufacturing a flint tool by pressing flakes from a stone core with a pointed implement, usually of wood tipped with antler or copper.
- price leadership — the setting of the price of a product or service by a dominant firm at a level that competitors can match, in order to avoid a price war
- primary election — primary (def 15a).
- primary electron — in thermionics, any of the electrons falling on a body, distinguished from those emitted by it
- principal clause — the main clause.
- principal rafter — a diagonal member of a roof principal, usually forming part of a truss and supporting the purlins on which the common rafters rest.
- private language — a language that is not merely secret or accidentally limited to one user, but that cannot in principle be communicated to another
- private-line car — a freight car owned by a company other than a railroad but operated over the tracks of railroads.
- privileged altar — an altar at which a plenary indulgence for a departed soul may be granted upon celebration of a Mass.
- processing plant — a factory where raw materials are treated or prepared by a special method, esp one where food is treated in order to preserve it
- proenvironmental — the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.
- professionalisms — professional character, spirit, or methods.
- programme seller — someone who sells written or printed lists of the events, performers, etc, in a theatre performance
- project planning — project management
- projective plane — (mathematics) The space of equivalence classes of vectors under non-zero scalar multiplication. Elements are sets of the form {kv: k != 0, k scalar, v != O, v a vector} where O is the origin. v is a representative member of this equivalence class. The projective plane of a vector space is the collection of its 1-dimensional subspaces. The properties of the vector space induce a topology and notions of smoothness on the projective plane. A projective plane is in no meaningful sense a plane and would therefore be (but isn't) better described as a "projective space".
- prolonged-action — sustained-release.