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19-letter words containing c, i, r, a, t, e

  • piece de resistance — the principal dish of a meal.
  • pileated woodpecker — a large, black-and-white American woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus, having a prominent red crest.
  • pirates of penzance — an operetta (1879) by Sir William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
  • pistachio ice cream — ice cream flavoured with pistachios
  • plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
  • pneumogastric nerve — the vagus nerve.
  • pocket-handkerchief — handkerchief (def 1).
  • poincare conjecture — Mathematics. the question of whether a compact, simply connected three-dimensional manifold is topologically equivalent to a three-dimensional sphere.
  • police headquarters — building where police are stationed
  • political geography — the branch of human geography that deals with the relationship between political processes and spatial structures (regions, territories, etc)
  • politically correct — marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving especially ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or ecology: The actor’s comment about unattractive women was not politically correct. The CEO feels that people who care about being politically correct are overly sensitive. Abbreviations: PC, P.C.
  • post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
  • potassium carbonate — a white, granular, water-soluble powder, K 2 CO 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of soap, glass, and potassium salts.
  • preach to the choir — to express an opinion to someone who is already in agreement with it
  • predicate adjective — an adjective used in the predicate, especially with a copulative verb and attributive to the subject, as in He is dead, or attributive to the direct object, as in It made him sick.
  • predicate objective — objective complement.
  • preproduction trial — a trial to test a prototype of a product before the product goes into full-scale production
  • prescription charge — a charge, set by the government, to be paid by a patient for medicines
  • presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
  • pretty as a picture — girl: sweetly attractive
  • pretty good privacy — (tool, cryptography)   (PGP) A high security RSA public-key encryption application for MS-DOS, Unix, VAX/VMS, and other computers. It was written by Philip R. Zimmermann <[email protected]> of Phil's Pretty Good(tm) Software and later augmented by a cast of thousands, especially including Hal Finney, Branko Lankester, and Peter Gutmann. PGP was distributed as "guerrilla freeware". The authors don't mind if it is distributed widely, just don't ask Philip Zimmermann to send you a copy. PGP uses a public-key encryption algorithm claimed by US patent #4,405,829. The exclusive rights to this patent are held by a California company called Public Key Partners, and you may be infringing this patent if you use PGP in the USA. This is explained in the PGP User's Guide, Volume II. PGP allows people to exchange files or messages with privacy and authentication. Privacy and authentication are provided without managing the keys associated with conventional cryptographic software. No secure channels are needed to exchange keys between users, which makes PGP much easier to use. This is because PGP is based on public-key cryptography. PGP encrypts data using the International Data Encryption Algorithm with a random session key, and uses the RSA algorithm to encrypt the session key. In December 1994 Philip Zimmermann faced prosecution for "exporting" PGP out of the United States but in January 1996 the US Goverment dropped the case. A US law prohibits the export of encryption software out of the country. Zimmermann did not do this, but the US government hoped to establish the proposition that posting an encryption program on a BBS or on the Internet constitutes exporting it - in effect, stretching export control into domestic censorship. If the government had won it would have had a chilling effect on the free flow of information on the global network, as well as on everyone's privacy from government snooping.
  • primary containment — Primary containment is the main means of preventing leaks and spills using equipment in direct content with the oil or gas being stored or transported.
  • prismatic telescope — a telescope having an eyepiece at the side or top equipped with a reflecting prism, used for taking sights at steep angles.
  • private first class — a soldier ranking above a private and below a corporal or specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army, and above a private and below a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
  • private prosecution — a prosecution started by a private individual rather than by the police
  • programmer's switch — (hardware)   A button on the front of some Apple Macintosh computers which, when pressed, causes a command line prompt to appear. This gives access to the built-in mini-debugger, which has commands to dump memory, return to the application that was broken out, and others. A more sophisticated debugger must be installed in order to inspect breakpoints, etc.
  • pseudo-aristocratic — of or relating to government by an aristocracy.
  • pseudo-conservative — disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
  • psychrometric chart — a chart for calculating values of relative humidity, absolute humidity, and dew point from psychrometer readings.
  • public-interest law — a branch of law that often utilizes class-action suits to protect the interest of a large group or of the public at large, as in matters relating to racial discrimination, air pollution, etc.
  • puncture repair kit — set of tools for patching a bicycle tyre
  • quantum electronics — the application of quantum mechanics and quantum optics to the study and design of electronic devices
  • quick-change artist — a person adept at changing from one thing to another, as an entertainer who changes costumes quickly during a performance.
  • radioactive fallout — the settling to the ground of airborne particles ejected into the atmosphere from the earth by explosions, eruptions, forest fires, etc., especially such settling from nuclear explosions (radioactive fallout) Compare rainout.
  • radiopharmaceutical — any of a number of radioactive drugs used diagnostically or therapeutically.
  • radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
  • rayleigh scattering — the scattering of light by particles that are very small in relation to the wavelength of the light, and in which the intensity of the scattered light varies inversely with the fourth power of the wavelength.
  • reactive depression — depression occurring in response to some situational stress, as loss of one's job.
  • rebus sic stantibus — (of the duration of the binding force treaty) for as long as the relevant facts and circumstances remain basically the same.
  • reciprocity failure — a failure of the two exposure variables, light intensity and exposure time, to behave in a reciprocal fashion at very high or very low values
  • reconceptualization — to form into a concept; make a concept of.
  • recording secretary — an officer charged with keeping the minutes of meetings and responsible for the records.
  • recurrence relation — (mathematics)   An equation that defines each element of a sequence in terms of one or more earlier elements. E.g. The Fibonacci sequence, X[1] = 1 X[2] = 1 X[n] = X[n-1] + X[n-2] Some recurrence relations can be converted to "closed form" where X[n] is defined purely in terms of n, without reference to earlier elements.
  • reduction potential — (in a galvanic cell) the potential of the electrode at which reduction occurs.
  • register allocation — (compiler, algorithm)   The phase of a compiler that determines which values will be placed in registers. Register allocation may be combined with register assignment. This problem can be shown to be isomorphic to graph colouring by relating values to nodes in the graph and registers to colours. Values (nodes) which must be valid simultaneously are linked by edges and cannot be stored in the same register (coloured the same). See also register dancing and register spilling.
  • relational calculus — (database)   An operational methodolgy, founded on predicate calculus, dealing with descripitive expressions that are equivalent to the operations of relational algebra. Codd's reduction algorithm can convert from relational calculus to relational algebra. Two forms of the relational calculus exist: the tuple calculus and the domain calculus.
  • relative complement — the set of elements contained in a given set that are not elements of another specified set.
  • religious education — religion as school subject
  • relocation expenses — Relocation expenses are a sum of money that a company pays to someone who moves to a new area in order to work for the company. The money is to help them pay for moving house.
  • removable cartridge — a hard disk enclosed in a case that can be removed from the disk drive, having more storage than floppy disks.
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