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17-letter words containing a, s, p, o

  • optical astronomy — the branch of observational astronomy using telescopes to observe or photograph celestial objects in visible light.
  • optical isomerism — stereoisomerism in which the isomers are identical in molecular weight and most chemical and physical properties but differ in their effect on the rotation of polarized light.
  • organ-pipe cactus — a treelike or columnar cactus, Lemaireocereus marginatus, of Mexico, having a central, erect spine surrounded by spreading spines in clusters of five to eight, and funnel-shaped, brownish-purple flowers.
  • organic psychosis — a severe mental illness produced by damage to the brain, as a result of poisoning, alcoholism, disease, etc
  • organophosphorous — Misspelling of organophosphorus.
  • over-compensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
  • overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
  • pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
  • pair of compasses — compass (def 7)
  • paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
  • paleoconservative — a person advocating an older, traditional type of conservatism, especially in politics.
  • papanicolaou test — Pap test.
  • paradoxical sleep — REM sleep.
  • parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
  • parker house roll — a soft dinner roll made by folding a flat disk of dough in half.
  • parts of kesteven — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
  • parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
  • pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
  • passamaquoddy bay — an inlet of the Bay of Fundy, between Maine and New Brunswick, at the mouth of the St. Croix River.
  • passenger station — a station used by passengers
  • passive obedience — unquestioning obedience to authority
  • pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
  • pastoral theology — the branch of theology dealing with the responsibilities of members of the clergy to the people under their care.
  • pate de foie gras — See under foie gras.
  • patriarchal cross — a Latin cross having a shorter crosspiece above the customary one.
  • pay someone's way — to pay someone's share of the expenses
  • peloponnesian war — a war between Athens and Sparta, 431–404 b.c., that resulted in the transfer of hegemony in Greece from Athens to Sparta.
  • penalty shoot-out — In football, a penalty shoot-out is a way of deciding the result of a game that has ended in a draw. Players from each team try to score a goal in turn until one player fails to score and their team loses the game.
  • performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
  • performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
  • peripheral vision — all that is visible to the eye outside the central area of focus; side vision.
  • pernicious anemia — Pernicious anemia is a very severe blood disease.
  • persona non grata — a person who is not welcome: He has become persona non grata in our club since his angry outburst.
  • personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
  • personal distance — personal space.
  • personal equation — the tendency to personal bias that accounts for variation in interpretation or approach and for which allowance must be made.
  • 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
  • personnel carrier — a vehicle used for transporting troops
  • personnel manager — head of Human Resources department
  • perspicaciousness — having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning: to exhibit perspicacious judgment.
  • 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.
  • pillion passenger — a person who travels in a seat or place behind the rider of a motorcycle, scooter, horse, etc
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