18-letter words containing a, r, n, o
- population pyramid — a graph showing the distribution of a population by sex, age, etc.
- porcupine anteater — an echidna or spiny anteater.
- 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.
- portuguese guinean — of or relating to Portuguese Guinea, a former name for Guinea-Bissau, or its inhabitants
- post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- postmaster general — the executive head of the postal system of a country.
- postmillenarianism — postmillennialism.
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- potassium myronate — sinigrin.
- potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
- 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.
- pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
- prairie wake-robin — a woodland trillium, Trillium recurvatum, of the central U.S., having purple-mottled leaves and brown-purple flowers.
- prayer of manasses — a book of the Apocrypha.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- predation pressure — the effect of predation upon a population, resulting in the decrease in size of that population.
- prepare the ground — make conditions ready
- prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
- prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
- presentation layer — (networking) The second highest layer (layer 6) in the OSI seven layer model. Performs functions such as text compression, code or format conversion to try to smooth out differences between hosts. Allows incompatible processes in the application layer to communicate via the session layer. Documents: ITU Rec. X.226 (ISO 8823), ITU Rec. X.216 (ISO 8822).
- preservation order — In Britain, a preservation order is an official order that makes it illegal for anyone to alter or destroy something such as an old building or an area of countryside.
- prestidigitization — /pres`t*-di"j*-ti:-zay"sh*n/ 1. A term coined by Daniel Klein <[email protected]> for the act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
- 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.
- price on sb's head — If there is a price on someone 's head, an amount of money has been offered for the capture or killing of that person.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- prince of darkness — Satan.
- principal diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- prison authorities — the people in charge of running a prison
- prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
- processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
- product acceptance — the verification or acceptance that a manufactured item meets required specifications or standards and is usable for its purpose
- production company — an organization which produces, films, plays, television or radio programmes
- production manager — a supervisor of the budget, crew and other details in the production of a film or play
- programme planning — the act of creating plans or schedules, esp in relation to your occupation
- programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
- project management — leadership of a task or programme
- projection machine — an apparatus that projects motion pictures; projector.
- promotion campaign — a campaign designed to encourage the sale of (a product) by advertising or securing financial support
- propaganda machine — the group of people, publications, etc, such as of a government, country etc, responsible for the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- proportional limit — elastic limit.
- proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
- protease inhibitor — a drug that inhibits the action of protease, especially any of a class of antiviral drugs that prevent the cleavage and replication of HIV proteins.
- 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.
- provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
- provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
- pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.