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

  • policeman's helmet — a Himalayan balsaminaceous plant, Impatiens glandulifera, with large purplish-pink flowers, introduced into Britain
  • political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
  • political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
  • polynesian tattler — a sandpiper, H. incanus, native to the Pacific coastal regions
  • population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
  • population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
  • porter-house steak — Also called porterhouse steak. a choice cut of beef from between the prime ribs and the sirloin.
  • portuguese guinean — of or relating to Portuguese Guinea, a former name for Guinea-Bissau, or its inhabitants
  • positively charged — having a positive charge
  • post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
  • postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
  • 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 chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
  • potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
  • potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
  • potassium myronate — sinigrin.
  • potassium sulphate — a soluble substance usually obtained as colourless crystals of the decahydrate: used in making glass and as a fertilizer. Formula: K2SO4
  • pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
  • 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.
  • preparatory school — a private or parochial secondary school, especially one boarding its students and providing a college-preparatory education.
  • 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.
  • press photographer — a photographer who works for a newspaper, magazine, etc
  • 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.
  • prince of darkness — Satan.
  • 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.
  • programme of study — the prescribed syllabus that pupils must be taught at each key stage in the National Curriculum
  • programmer's cheer — (humour)   "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" [Origin?]
  • programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
  • property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
  • proprietary rights — rights of ownership
  • 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.
  • provascular tissue — procambium.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • przewalski's horse — a wild horse, Equus caballus przevalskii, chiefly of Mongolia and Sinkiang, characterized by light yellow coloring and a stiff, upright black mane with no forelock: the only remaining breed of wild horse, it is now endangered and chiefly maintained in zoos.
  • pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
  • pseudo-socialistic — of or relating to socialists or socialism.
  • pseudo-symptomatic — pertaining to a symptom or symptoms.
  • pseudoappendicitis — inflammation of the vermiform appendix.
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