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21-letter words containing e, l, o, p, r

  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • pneumoencephalography — encephalography.
  • polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
  • political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
  • politically incorrect — not politically correct; potentially offensive to a particular group of people: politically incorrect jokes.
  • polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
  • populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
  • portable commodore 64 — (computer)   A version of the Commodore 64 modelled after the original Osborne portable PCs, with a flip-down keyboard that revealed a 5-inch colour monitor, and a built-in 1541 floppy disk drive. It is thought that few were made but that they did go on sale, at least in Canada.
  • portable common loops — (PCL) A language which started out as an implementation of CommonLoops and turned into a portable CLOS implementation. Version 1992-08-28. It runs under Lucid Common LISP 4.0.1 and CMU Common LISP 16e.
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • pre-sales support rep — (job)   A person who supports sales by analysing customer requirements, proposing and demonstrating technical solutions, ensuring acceptable product installations, training users and providing initial technical support.
  • prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
  • premature ejaculation — a male psychosexual disorder in which ejaculation occurs soon after the commencement of sexual intercourse.
  • premenstrual syndrome — a complex of physical and emotional changes, including depression, irritability, appetite changes, bloating and water retention, breast soreness, and changes in muscular coordination, one or more of which may be experienced in the several days before the onset of menstrual flow. Abbreviation: PMS.
  • primitive dicotyledon — any living relative of early angiosperms that branched off before the evolution of monocotyledons and eudicotyledons. The group comprises about 5 per cent of the world's plants
  • probable maximum loss — Probable maximum loss is the maximum amount of loss that can be expected under normal circumstances.
  • processor direct slot — (hardware)   (PDS) Apple Computer's name for a local bus connection. Most Macintoshes have only one PDS connector. Different Apple computers have different PDS specifications.
  • professional services — (job)   A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
  • programmed cell death — a normal, genetically regulated process leading to the death of cells and triggered by the presence or absence of certain stimuli, as DNA damage.
  • projection television — a television picture display system consisting of a special receiver and an optical system that projects an enlarged picture on a screen.
  • propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
  • protective coloration — coloration or anything likened to it that eliminates or reduces visibility or conspicuousness.
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • psychoneuroimmunology — the study of the effects of psychological factors on the immune system
  • public-key encryption — (cryptography)   (PKE, Or "public-key cryptography") An encryption scheme, introduced by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, where each person gets a pair of keys, called the public key and the private key. Each person's public key is published while the private key is kept secret. Messages are encrypted using the intended recipient's public key and can only be decrypted using his private key. This is often used in conjunction with a digital signature. The need for sender and receiver to share secret information (keys) via some secure channel is eliminated: all communications involve only public keys, and no private key is ever transmitted or shared. Public-key encryption can be used for authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation. See also knapsack problem.
  • pull oneself together — to draw or haul toward oneself or itself, in a particular direction, or into a particular position: to pull a sled up a hill.
  • purple-fringed orchid — either of two orchids, Habenaria fimbriata or H. psycodes, of eastern North America, having a cluster of fragrant purple flowers with a fringed lip.
  • purple-fringed orchis — either of two North American orchids (Habenaria psycodes and H. fimbriata) with purple-fringed flowers
  • quality point average — grade point average.
  • quantum teleportation — a hypothetical technique to instantly transfer properties from one quantum system to another without contact, or to transfer a quantum state to an arbitrarily distant location.
  • ralph roister doister — a play (1553?) by Nicholas Udall: the earliest known English comedy.
  • rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
  • real operating system — (operating system, abuse)   The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
  • real-estate developer — a person who buys and develops houses, buildings, and land in order to sell them and make a profit from them
  • reciprocal inhibition — the theory that the pairing of an anxiety-provoking stimulus with anxiety-reducing reactions will weaken the association between the stimulus and the anxiety.
  • reconnaissance patrol — a patrol made by soldiers in order to obtain military information about a particular place
  • rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
  • redevelopment company — a private corporation or a public agency that stimulates the improvement of land, as through a building project subject to certain designs and controls, by financing, selling, or leasing such real estate to interested buyers or lessees.
  • redlegged grasshopper — a migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, of the southwestern and midwestern U.S., having reddish skin on the underside of the hind legs: an agricultural pest.
  • redwood national park — a national park in N California: redwood forest with some of the world's tallest trees. 172 sq. mi. (445 sq. km).
  • remote procedure call — (networking, programming)   (RPC) A protocol which allows a program running on one host to cause code to be executed on another host without the programmer needing to explicitly code for this. RPC is an easy and popular paradigm for implementing the client-server model of distributed computing. An RPC is initiated by the caller (client) sending request message to a remote system (the server) to execute a certain procedure using arguments supplied. A result message is returned to the caller. There are many variations and subtleties in various implementations, resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPC protocols.
  • remote write protocol — (chat, protocol)   (RWP) A proposed Internet protocol for exchanging short messages between terminals. The RWP proposal is detailed in RFC 1756.
  • replacement algorithm — The method used to determine which entry in an associative cache to flush to main memory when it is desired to cache a new block of data. The "least recently used" algorithm flushed the block which has not been accessed for the longest time. A random replacement algorithm picks any block with equal probability.
  • residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
  • return the compliment — repay sb's kindness with a kind act
  • reverse polish syntax — postfix notation
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