18-letter words containing c, o, p, r, e
- pick of the litter — objects strewn or scattered about; scattered rubbish.
- pilotless aircraft — an aircraft equipped for operation by radio or by robot control, without a human pilot aboard; drone.
- pneumatic conveyor — a tube through which powdered or granular material, such as cement, grain, etc is transported by a flow of air
- point of reference — A point of reference is something which you use to help you understand a situation or communicate with someone.
- political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
- pollen mother cell — one of the mother cells that produce four microspores by meiosis.
- polystyrene cement — a purpose-made adhesive for fixing rigid polystyrene
- polyvinyl chloride — a white, water-insoluble, thermoplastic resin, derived by the polymerization of vinyl chloride: used chiefly for thin coatings, insulation, and pipings.
- porcupine anteater — an echidna or spiny anteater.
- portion-controlled — being a standardized portion of food: The restaurant uses frozen, portion-controlled entrées.
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- precious moonstone — moonstone (def 1).
- prefect of studies — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- preparatory school — a private or parochial secondary school, especially one boarding its students and providing a college-preparatory education.
- present continuous — a verb form consisting of an auxiliary be in the present tense followed by a present participle and used especially to indicate that a present action or event is in progress, being repeated, or of a temporary nature or to express the future.
- 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.
- prism spectrometer — an optical device for measuring wavelengths, deviation of refracted rays, and angles between faces of a prism, especially an instrument (prism spectrometer) consisting of a slit through which light passes, a collimator, a prism that deviates the light, and a telescope through which the deviated light is viewed and examined.
- process identifier — (operating system) (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
- process scheduling — multitasking
- 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
- product life cycle — the four stages (introduction, growth, maturity, and decline) into one of which the sales of a product fall during its market life
- production manager — a supervisor of the budget, crew and other details in the production of a film or play
- programmer's cheer — (humour) "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" [Origin?]
- progressive coding — (graphics, file format, algorithm) (Or "interlacing") An aspect of a graphics storage format or transmission algorithm that treats bitmap image data non-sequentially in such a way that later data adds progressively greater resolution to an already full-size image. This contrasts with sequential coding. Progressive coding is useful when an image is being sent across a slow communications channel, such as the Internet, as the low-resolution image may be sufficient to allow the user to decide not to wait for the rest of the file to be received. In an interlaced GIF89 image, the pixels in a row are stored sequentially but the rows are stored in interlaced order, e.g. 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 6, 8, 10, 14, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Each vertical scan adds rows in the middle of the gaps left by the previous one. Interlacing is also supported by other formats. JPEG supports a functionally similar concept known as Progressive JPEG. [How does the algorithm differ?] See also progressive/sequential coding.
- project management — leadership of a task or programme
- projection machine — an apparatus that projects motion pictures; projector.
- projection printer — enlarger.
- 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
- 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.
- protective colloid — a lyophilic colloid added to a lyophobic sol to lessen its sensitivity to the precipitating effect of an electrolyte.
- protective custody — detention of a person by the police solely as protection against a possible attack or reprisal by someone.
- protein deficiency — a lack or insuffiency of protein
- protocol converter — (networking) A device or program to translate between different protocols which serve similar functions (e.g. TCP and TP4). Some call this a "gateway", though others use that term for other kinds of internetworking device.
- provascular tissue — procambium.
- provincetown print — a print made from a woodblock incised with grooves that serve to separate the colors being used and to leave white lines highlighting the design.
- 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.
- pseudotuberculosis — an acute, sometimes fatal disease of rodents, birds, and other animals, including humans, caused by the bacterium Yersinia (Pasteurella) pseudotuberculosis, and characterized by the formation of nodules resembling those that result from tuberculosis.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- psychotherapeutics — psychotherapy.
- puerto rico trench — a depression in the ocean floor, N of Puerto Rico: includes deepest part of Atlantic Ocean, 28,374 feet (8648 meters).