26-letter words containing a, p, r, i
- parent-teacher association — an organization of teachers and the parents of their students, as within a public school, to promote mutual understanding and to increase the effectiveness of the educational program. Abbreviation: PTA, P.T.A.
- pellagra-preventive factor — nicotinic acid or its amide, nicotinamide, being the vitamin-B-complex members that serve to prevent pellagra.
- people's republic of china — People's Republic of, a country in E Asia. 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). Capital: Beijing.
- period-luminosity relation — the relationship between the period of light variation and of the absolute magnitude of Cepheid variable stars.
- permanent health insurance — a form of insurance that provides up to 75 per cent of a person's salary, until retirement, in case of prolonged illness or disability
- personal digital assistant — a handheld computer, often pen-based, that provides especially organizational software, as an appointment calendar, and communications hardware, as a fax modem. Abbreviation: PDA.
- phenylethylbarbituric acid — phenobarbital.
- phenylpyruvic oligophrenia — phenylketonuria.
- philosophical anthropology — anthropology (def 4).
- philosophical-anthropology — the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind.
- physical transport network — (communications) (PTN) The actual hardware through which data transfer devices are connected.
- physics analysis workbench — (tool) (PAW) A general purpose portable tool for analysis and presentation of physics data.
- pick up the threads of sth — If you pick up the threads of an activity, you start it again after an interruption. If you pick up the threads of your life, you become more active again after a period of failure or bad luck.
- portable forth environment — (language) (PFE) A highly portable Forth development system based on the ANSI standard for Forth, by Dirk-Uwe Zoller of FHT, Mannheim, Germany. PFE aims to be correct, complete, usable, and simple but it isn't optimised for speed. It supports all dpANS word sets. It runs on Linux, RS/6000, and HP-UX. E-mail: Guido Draheim <[email protected]>.
- post-and-beam construction — wall construction in which beams rather than studs are used to support heavy posts.
- postprandial thermogenesis — the rate at which food is broken down after a meal and used by your body
- primary sex characteristic — any of the body structures directly concerned in reproduction, as the testes, ovaries, and external genitalia.
- primo de rivera y orbaneja — Miguel [mee-gel] /miˈgɛl/ (Show IPA), 1870–1930, Spanish general and dictator 1923–30.
- prince henry the navigator — Prince, 1394–1460, prince of Portugal.
- private finance initiative — (in Britain) a government scheme to encourage private investment in public projects
- privately held corporation — A privately held corporation is a company whose shares cannot be bought by the general public.
- professional office system — (messaging) (PROFS) An office messaging system from IBM, used worldwide, mainly on IBM mainframes.
- psychophysical parallelism — the view that mental and bodily events occur in parallel series without causal interaction.
- public-liability insurance — insurance covering the insured against risks involving liability to the public for damages arising from negligence.
- public-service corporation — a private or quasi-private corporation chartered to provide an essential commodity or service to the public.
- purely functional language — (language) A language that supports only functional programming and does not allow functions to have side-effects. Program execution consists of evaluation of an expression and all subexpressions are referentially transparent.
- put a bug in someone's ear — Also called true bug, hemipteran, hemipteron. a hemipterous insect.
- put one's signature to sth — If you put your signature to a document, you sign it as a way of officially showing that you agree with what is written.
- quite apart from something — used to indicate that you are aware of one aspect of a situation, but that you are going to focus on another aspect
- real-time operating system — (operating system) (RTOS) Any operating system where interrupts are guaranteed to be handled within a certain specified maximum time, thereby making it suitable for control of hardware in embedded systems and other time-critical applications. RTOS is not a specific product but a class of operating systems.
- remembrance of things past — a novel (1913–27) by Marcel Proust.
- repetitive strain disorder — overuse strain injury
- replacement cost insurance — Replacement cost insurance is insurance in which the cost of replacing property is calculated without a reduction for depreciation.
- retained object complement — an object complement that is kept in its predicative position following the verb when the verb is transformed into the passive voice, as genius in He was considered a genius from (They) considered him a genius.
- ritz combination principle — the principle that the frequencies of lines in atomic spectra can be represented as differences of a smaller number of terms, all characteristic of the emitting system, interpreted in quantum theory as the emission of exactly one photon in a transition between energy levels.
- round peg in a square hole — a person in a position, situation, etc. for which he or she is unsuited or unqualified
- scintillation spectrometer — a scintillation counter adapted for measuring the energy distribution of particles emitted in radioactive processes.
- search engine optimization — the process of adjusting the content, structure, etc, of a website so that it will be displayed prominently by a search engine
- serotonin receptor agonist — A serotonin receptor agonist is any compound that activates serotonin receptors when serotonin is not present.
- show a clean pair of heels — to run off
- simple algebraic extension — a simple extension in which the specified element is a root of an algebraic equation in the given field.
- square peg in a round hole — If you describe someone as a square peg in a round hole, you mean that they are in a situation or doing something that does not suit them at all.
- ssh file transfer protocol — (networking) (SFTP) A version of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) using an encrypted network connection provided by Secure Shell (SSH), usually SSH 2. The SFTP protocol allows for a range of operations on remote files, making it more like a remote file system protocol. SFTP clients can resume interrupted transfers, get directory listings and remove remote files. SFTP has largely replaced Secure Copy (SCP).
- straight-line depreciation — Straight-line depreciation is a method of depreciation in which an equal amount of depreciation is taken each year.
- string processing language — (language) (SPRING)
- super video graphics array — (hardware) (SVGA) A video display standard created by VESA for IBM PC compatible personal computers. The resolution is 800 x 600 4-bit pixels. Each pixel can therefore be one of 16 colours. See Video Graphics Array.
- symbolic assembler program — (language) (SAP) The assembly language for the IBM 704, defined in the late 1950s.
- take priority/has priority — If something takes priority or has priority over other things, it is regarded as being more important than them and is dealt with first.
- temperature-humidity index — a number representing an estimate of the effect of temperature and moisture on humans, computed by multiplying the sum of dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature readings by 0.4 and adding 15, with 65 assumed as the highest comfortable index. Abbreviation: T.H.I.
- textured vegetable protein — soya meat; a meat substitute that is made from soy flour