17-letter words containing a, s, o, p, t
- personal property — an estate or property consisting of movable articles both corporeal, as furniture or jewelry, or incorporeal, as stocks or bonds (distinguished from real property).
- personality clash — friction between two people who have different personalities or points of view
- perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
- peterloo massacre — an incident at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, in 1819 in which a radical meeting was broken up by a cavalry charge, resulting in about 500 injuries and 11 deaths
- petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
- photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
- photodissociation — the dissociation or breakdown of a chemical compound by radiant energy.
- phototherapeutics — the branch of therapeutics that deals with the curative use of light rays.
- pincushion cactus — any of various low-growing, spiny cacti of the genus Mammillaria.
- pitot-static tube — a device combining a Pitot tube with a static tube: used to measure airspeed.
- planck's constant — the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, expressing the ratio of the energy of one quantum of radiation to the frequency of the radiation and approximately equal to 6.624 × 10− 27 erg-seconds. Symbol: h.
- plastic explosive — a puttylike substance that contains an explosive charge, and is detonated by fuse or by remote control: used especially by terrorists and in guerrilla warfare.
- plateau's problem — the problem in the calculus of variations of finding the surface with the least area bounded by a given closed curve in space.
- play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
- pocket battleship — a small heavily armed and armored warship serving as a battleship because of limitations imposed by treaty.
- point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- point reyes lilac — a prostrate shrub, Ceanothus gloriosus, of southern California, having leathery, roundish leaves and purplish or deep-blue flowers.
- point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- polar coordinates — Usually, polar coordinates. one of two coordinates used to locate a point in a plane by the length of its radius vector and the angle this vector makes with the polar axis (polar angle)
- polioencephalitis — a disease characterized by inflammation of the gray matter of the brain.
- political science — a social science dealing with political institutions and with the principles and conduct of government.
- porterhouse steak — large cut of beef loin
- portuguese guinea — former name of Guinea-Bissau.
- positive feedback — Electronics. the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input (negative feedback) or to aid the input (positive feedback) acoustic feedback.
- positive polarity — the grammatical characteristic of a word or phrase, such as delicious or rather, that may normally only be used in a semantically or syntactically positive or affirmative context
- post-and-rail tea — (in the 19th century) a coarse tea in which floating particles resembled a post-and-rail fence
- post-depositional — removal from an office or position.
- postage due stamp — a stamp that is affixed to mail at a post office when prepayment of postage is insufficient, to indicate the amount that must be collected from the addressee.
- postal stationery — an envelope, postal card, wrapper, or aérogramme, with the stamp printed directly on the paper.
- postbaccalaureate — bachelor's degree.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- poststructuralism — a variation of structuralism, often seen as a critique, emphasizing plurality of meaning and instability of concepts that structuralism uses to define society, language, etc.
- posttranslational — Genetics, Biochemistry. occurring after the synthesis of a polypeptide chain.
- postural drainage — a therapy for clearing congested lungs by placing the patient in a position for drainage by gravity, often accompanied by percussion with hollowed hands.
- potassium acetate — a white, crystalline, deliquescent, water-soluble powder, KC 2 H 3 O 2 , used chiefly as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
- potassium bromate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, KBrO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent and as an analytical reagent.
- potassium bromide — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, KBr, having a bitter saline taste: used chiefly in the manufacture of photographic papers and plates, in engraving, and in medicine as a sedative.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- potassium oxalate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 2 C 2 O 4 ⋅H 2 O, used chiefly as a bleaching agent and in medical tests as an anticoagulant.
- potassium sulfate — a crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 2 SO 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers, alums, and mineral water, and as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
- poulter's measure — a metrical pattern using couplets having the first line in iambic hexameter, or 12 syllables, and the second in iambic heptameter, or 14 syllables.
- pre-investigation — the act or process of investigating or the condition of being investigated.
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- precision casting — investment casting.
- prefect apostolic — the administrator, usually below the rank of bishop, in charge of a prefecture apostolic.
- preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.