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16-letter words containing a, p, l, n

  • paulinus of nola — Saint. ?353–431 ad, Roman consul and Christian poet; bishop of Nola (409–431). Feast day: June 22
  • pavillon chinois — crescent (def 6).
  • 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
  • pelagian islands — a group of Italian islands (Lampedusa, Linosa, and Lampione) in the Mediterranean, between Tunisia and Malta. Pop: 6066 (2004 est). Area: about 27 sq km (11 sq miles)
  • pelagic division — the biogeographic realm or zone that comprises the open seas and oceans, including water of all depths.
  • 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).
  • pentatonic scale — a scale having five tones to an octave, as one having intervals that correspond to the five black keys of a piano octave.
  • pentothal sodium — thiopental sodium
  • 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.
  • phantasmagorical — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
  • 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
  • philanthropistic — a person who practices philanthropy.
  • photocoagulation — a surgical technique using an intense beam of light from a laser or a xenon-arc bulb to seal blood vessels or coagulate tissue, used primarily in ophthalmology to repair detached retinas or to treat certain kinds of retinopathy.
  • phylogenetically — the development or evolution of a particular group of organisms.
  • physical fitness — good physical condition
  • physical science — any of the natural sciences dealing with inanimate matter or with energy, as physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
  • physiognomically — the face or countenance, especially when considered as an index to the character: a fierce physiognomy.
  • 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.
  • 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
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