18-letter words containing f, p, o
- peacekeeping force — a force designated to the maintenance of peace, esp the prevention of further fighting between hostile forces in an area
- pellitory of spain — a small Mediterranean plant, Anacyclus pyrethrum, the root of which contains an oil formerly used to relieve toothache: family Asteraceae (composites)
- people trafficking — the practice of bringing immigrants into a country illegally
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- perfect continuous — perfect progressive.
- perfect contrition — sincere penitence or remorse.
- perforated tracery — tracery, as in early Gothic architecture, formed of cut or pierced slabs of stone set on edge with the flat side outward.
- performance artist — an artist that is involved in a theatrical presentation that incorporates various art forms, such as dance, sculpture, music, etc
- peter and the wolf — a composition by Sergei Prokofiev written in 1936. It is a children's story with both music and text, spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra
- phenol coefficient — the number indicating the effectiveness of a disinfectant as a germicide relative to phenol, which is arbitrarily assigned the number 1: based on the time required to kill a given quantity of a specific type of bacteria.
- philosophy of life — any philosophical view or vision of the nature or purpose of life or of the way that life should be lived.
- pick of the litter — objects strewn or scattered about; scattered rubbish.
- piecewise function — a function whose definition changes depending on the value of the independent variable
- pilotless aircraft — an aircraft equipped for operation by radio or by robot control, without a human pilot aboard; drone.
- plane of incidence — a plane determined by a given ray, incident on a surface, and the normal at the point where the incident ray strikes the surface.
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- play someone false — to deceive, cheat, hoodwink, or betray someone
- point of departure — Nautical. the precise location of a vessel, established in order to set a course, especially in beginning a voyage in open water.
- point of no return — Aviation. the point in a flight at which an aircraft will lack sufficient fuel to return to its starting point.
- point of reference — A point of reference is something which you use to help you understand a situation or communicate with someone.
- political football — a political issue that is continually debated but has not yet been resolved
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
- portrait of a lady — a novel (1881) by Henry James.
- potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
- power-on self-test — (hardware, testing) (POST) A sequence of diagnostic tests that are run automatically by a device when the power is turned on. In a personal computer a typical POST sequence does the following: - checks that the system board is working - checks that the memory is working - compares the current system configuration with that recorded by the PC's configuration program to see if anything has been added or removed or broken - starts the video operation - checks that the diskette drive, hard disk drive, CD-ROM drive, and any other drives that may be installed are working. When POST is finished, typically it will beep, and then let your operating system start to boot. If POST finds an error, it may beep more than once (or possibly not at all if it is your PC speaker that is broken) and display a POST error message. These messages are often nothing more than a single ominous number. Some common numbers and their meanings are: 161 Dead battery (get a new battery for the system board) 162 Configuration changed (you added some memory or a new card to the PC) 301 Keyboard error (take the book off the corner of the keyboard) Because a successful POST indicates that the system is restored to known state, turning the power off and on is a standard way to reset a system whose software has hung. Compare 120 reset, Big Red Switch, power cycle.
- prayer of manasses — a book of the Apocrypha.
- prefect of studies — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- preferred position — especially desirable advertising space for which, if it is specifically requested by the advertiser, a publication charges a premium rate.
- 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.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- prince of darkness — Satan.
- 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.
- 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
- programme of study — the prescribed syllabus that pupils must be taught at each key stage in the National Curriculum
- protein deficiency — a lack or insuffiency of protein
- provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- purple loosestrife — an Old World plant, Lythrum salicaria, of the loosestrife family, widely naturalized in North America, growing in wet places and having spikes of reddish-purple flowers.
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- put one in mind of — to remind (one) of
- put your foot down — If someone puts their foot down, they use their authority in order to stop something happening.
- rabbit-proof fence — a fence through which rabbits are unable to pass
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- repeat performance — sth done again
- reproduction proof — repro proof.
- safety-deposit box — a lockable metal box or drawer, especially in a bank vault, used for safely storing valuable papers, jewelry, etc.
- salt of phosphorus — a colorless, odorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, NaNH 4 HPO 4 ⋅4H 2 O, originally obtained from human urine: used as a blowpipe flux in testing metallic oxides.
- seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
- self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.