18-letter words containing a, p, l, u

play silly buggers — to fool around and waste time
pleasure principle — an automatic mental drive or instinct seeking to avoid pain and to obtain pleasure.
plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
plenum ventilation — a system of mechanical ventilation in which fresh air is forced into the spaces to be ventilated from a chamber (plenum chamber) at a pressure slightly higher than atmospheric pressure, so as to expel foul air.
plumber's merchant — a shop or business that sells things needed for the job of installing and repairing pipes, fixtures, etc, for water, drainage, and gas
political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
population balance — A population balance is a model showing particle sizes during a grinding process, which is used when designing a process.
population control — a policy of attempting to limit the growth in numbers of a population, esp in poor or densely populated parts of the world, by programmes of contraception or sterilization
population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
population pyramid — a graph showing the distribution of a population by sex, age, etc.
portable equipment — Portable equipment is electrical equipment that can easily be moved from one place to another while in operation or while connected to the supply.
portal circulation — blood flow in a portal system.
post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
potassium chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
potassium sulphate — a soluble substance usually obtained as colourless crystals of the decahydrate: used in making glass and as a fertilizer. Formula: K2SO4
pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
preantepenultimate — third from the end.
predicate calculus — predicate logic
presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
pressure altimeter — an aneroid barometer adapted for measuring altitude by converting the indicated atmospheric pressure to altitude according to a standard relationship.
presumption of law — a presumption based upon a policy of law or a general rule and not upon the facts or evidence in an individual case.
principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
provascular tissue — procambium.
provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
pseudo-socialistic — of or relating to socialists or socialism.
pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
publishing company — a firm which publishes books
pull one's head in — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
put the clock back — to regress
pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
quarter-wave plate — a crystal thin enough to cause a phase difference of 90° between the ordinary and extraordinary rays of polarized light, thereby converting circularly polarized light into plane polarized light.
quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
quasi-metaphysical — pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics.
real-time computer — a computer that can process data or information almost immediately
regular expression — 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use $RE$ instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
repayment schedule — a document detailing the specific terms of a borrower's loan, such as monthly payment, interest rate, due dates etc
resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.

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