16-letter words containing a, p, s, y, r
- pay-as-you-throw — denoting a system for waste collection in which households are charged according to the amount of refuse they leave
- pays de la loire — a region of W France, on the Bay of Biscay: generally low-lying, drained by the River Loire and its tributaries; agricultural
- pearly razorfish — See under razorfish.
- 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 stylist — a person employed by a rich or famous client to offer advice on clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of personal appearance
- 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 stuyvesant — Peter, 1592–1672, Dutch colonial administrator in the Americas: last governor of New Netherlands 1646–64.
- pharmacodynamics — the branch of pharmacology dealing with the course of action, effect, and breakdown of drugs within the body.
- 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.
- play one's cards — to carry out one's plans; take action (esp in the phrase play one's cards right)
- pocket secretary — a long, narrow walletlike case, usually of leather and containing pockets for credit and business cards, paper money, etc., and sometimes a notepad and pencil.
- poor boy sweater — a snug-fitting, pullover sweater with ribbing on both the body and sleeves, worn by girls and women.
- primary consumer — (in the food chain) an animal that feeds on plants; a herbivore.
- primary industry — an industry, as agriculture, forestry, or fishing, that deals in obtaining natural materials.
- primary meristem — primary tissue derived from an apical meristem.
- primary syphilis — the first stage of syphilis, characterized by the formation of a chancre at the site of infection.
- progress payment — an instalment of a larger payment made to a contractor for work carried out up to a specified stage of the job
- pseudoparenchyma — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
- psychogeriatrics — the psychology of old age.
- quasi-compulsory — required; mandatory; obligatory: compulsory education.
- radial paralysis — paralysis of a forelimb as a result of loss of function of the radial nerve, usually following traumatic injury
- ramsden eyepiece — an eyepiece consisting of two plano-convex crown-glass lenses of equal focal length, placed with the convex sides facing each other and with a separation between the lenses of about two-thirds of the focal length of each.
- raspberry sawfly — a black sawfly, Monophadnoides geniculatus, the larvae of which feed on the leaves of the raspberry and blackberry.
- representatively — a person or thing that represents another or others.
- reserve capacity — the capacity of a battery, measured in minutes, to keep a vehicle operating if the charging system fails.
- restriction play — a limited number of opening moves that are predetermined by their chance selection from an accepted list.
- rhinopharyngitis — inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose and pharynx.
- secondary phloem — phloem derived from the cambium during secondary growth.
- self-deprecatory — belittling or undervaluing oneself; excessively modest.
- self-exculpatory — intended to excuse oneself from blame or guilt
- self-explanatory — explaining itself; needing no explanation; obvious.
- sharpe's grysbok — either of two small, usually solitary antelopes of southern Africa, Raphicerus melanotis, or R. sharpei (Sharpe's grysbok) having a light to dark reddish-brown coat speckled with white.
- shorthand typing — shorthand and typing
- shorthand typist — A shorthand typist is a person who types and writes shorthand, usually in an office.
- showy crab apple — a large Japanese bush or tree, Malus floribunda, of the rose family, having red fruit and rose-colored flowers that fade to white.
- soapberry family — the plant family Sapindaceae, characterized by chiefly tropical trees, shrubs, or herbaceous vines having compound leaves, clustered flowers, and berrylike, fleshy, or capsular fruit, and including the balloon vine, golden rain tree, litchi, and soapberry.
- soft pornography — soft-core pornography.
- special delivery — (in the U.S. Postal Service) delivery of mail outside the regularly scheduled hours, by a special messenger, upon the payment of an extra fee.
- specific gravity — the ratio of the density of any substance to the density of some other substance taken as standard, water being the standard for liquids and solids, and hydrogen or air being the standard for gases.
- sphygmomanometer — an instrument, often attached to an inflatable air-bladder cuff and used with a stethoscope, for measuring blood pressure in an artery.
- sphygmomanometry — an instrument, often attached to an inflatable air-bladder cuff and used with a stethoscope, for measuring blood pressure in an artery.
- spiny-rayed fish — any of various fishes, as basses and perches, that have sharp, often pointed and usually rigid fin spines.
- spraying machine — a device for spraying large volumes of liquid, such as insecticide onto crops
- standing cypress — a plant, Ipomopsis rubra, of the southern U.S., having feathery leaves and clusters of red and yellow flowers.
- start-up company — new business