21-letter words containing e, s, p, a, d
- isopropylideneacetone — mesityl oxide.
- japanese stranglehold — a wrestling hold in which an opponent's wrists are pulled to cross his or her arms in front of his or her own neck and exert pressure on the windpipe
- joseph-marie jacquard — (person) /zhoh-zef' mah-ree' zhah-kar'/ (1752-07-07 to 1834-08-07) The inventor of the Jacquard loom.
- lap and shoulder belt — a car seat belt
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- magnetoplasmadynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
- male pattern baldness — a pattern of hair loss in males, dependent on the presence of the androgenic hormone testoterone, in which the scalp hair eventually covers only the back of the head and temples.
- male-pattern baldness — inherited baldness characterized by the gradual loss of hair from the front or top of the head
- marine superintendent — a person who is responsible for the maintenance of the vessels of a shipping line, for their docking and the handling of cargo, and for the hiring of personnel for deck departments.
- marquise de pompadour — Marquise de (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normant d'Étioles) 1721–64, mistress of Louis XV of France.
- medical jurisprudence — forensic medicine.
- metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
- modern apprenticeship — an arrangement that allows a school leaver to gain vocational qualifications while being trained in a job
- mucopolysaccharidoses — Plural form of mucopolysaccharidosis.
- old spanish practices — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
- pacific standard time — See under standard time.
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- partially ordered set — a set in which a relation as “less than or equal to” holds for some pairs of elements of the set, but not for all.
- pass the hat (around) — In British English, if you pass the hat around, you collect money from a group of people, for example in order to give someone a present. In American English, you just say pass the hat.
- past its sell-by date — the last date on which perishable food should be sold, usually established with some allowance for home storage under refrigeration. Compare shelf life.
- paternal grandparents — the parents of someone's father
- pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
- payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
- pdp assembly language — (language) (PAL) The assembly language for the PDP-8 and PDP-11.
- peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
- personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
- phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
- philadelphia scrapple — a superior variety of scrapple made with pork shoulder and other cuts of pork rather than with pork scraps.
- physically challenged — See example at challenged (def 1).
- piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
- pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
- 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
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pomp and circumstance — ceremony
- populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
- postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
- potassium diphosphate — any of the three orthophosphates of potassium ((potassium monophosphate) (K 2 HPO 4), (potassium diphosphate) (KH 2 PO 4), and (tripotassium phosphate) (K 3 PO 4) )
- prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
- 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.
- premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
- progressive education — any of various reformist educational philosophies and methodologies since the late 1800s, applied especially to elementary schools, that reject the rote recitation and strict discipline of traditional, single-classroom teaching, favoring instead more stimulation of the individual pupil as well as group discussion, more informality in the classroom, a broader curriculum, and use of laboratories, gymnasiums, kitchens, etc., in the school.
- protest demonstration — a manifestation of protest by public rally, parade, etc
- pseudohermaphroditism — an individual having internal reproductive organs of one sex and external sexual characteristics resembling those of the other sex or being ambiguous in nature. Compare hermaphrodite (def 1).
- psychopathic disorder — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a persistent disorder or disability of mind which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned
- public address system — loudspeaker
- public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
- pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.