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18-letter words containing i, p, r

  • 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 data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
  • provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
  • 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.
  • provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • przewalski's horse — a wild horse, Equus caballus przevalskii, chiefly of Mongolia and Sinkiang, characterized by light yellow coloring and a stiff, upright black mane with no forelock: the only remaining breed of wild horse, it is now endangered and chiefly maintained in zoos.
  • 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.
  • psychotherapeutics — psychotherapy.
  • public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
  • public expenditure — spending by central government, local authorities, and public corporations
  • puerto rico trench — a depression in the ocean floor, N of Puerto Rico: includes deepest part of Atlantic Ocean, 28,374 feet (8648 meters).
  • pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
  • pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
  • 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.
  • puss in the corner — a parlor game for children in which one player in the middle of a room tries to occupy any of the positions along the walls that become vacant as other players dash across to exchange places at a signal.
  • put one's shirt on — to bet all one has on (a horse, etc)
  • pyramus and thisbe — (in Greek legend) two lovers of Babylon: Pyramus, wrongly supposing Thisbe to be dead, killed himself and she, encountering him in his death throes, did the same
  • pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
  • pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
  • qattara depression — a desert basin in the Libyan Desert, in NW Egypt: lowest point is 435 feet (133 meters) below sea level. 6950 sq. mi. (18,000 sq. km).
  • quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
  • rabbit-proof fence — a fence through which rabbits are unable to pass
  • radiation exposure — exposure to radiant energy or to the particles emitted in the transfer of radiant energy, esp the particles and gamma rays emitted in nuclear decay; exposure to radioactive substances
  • radiation pressure — the pressure exerted on a surface by electromagnetic radiation or by sound waves.
  • radical empiricism — (in the philosophy of William James) the doctrine that the only proper subject matter of philosophy is that which can be defined in terms of experience, and that relations are a part of experience.
  • radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
  • rail rapid transit — a system of rail transit within an urban area that has exclusive right of way either below, above, or on the ground and so is capable of relatively high operating speed. Abbreviation: RRT.
  • rape crisis centre — a place that provides support to people who have been victims of rape or other kinds of sexual abuse
  • rapid eye movement — rapidly shifting, continuous movements of the eyes beneath closed lids during the stage of sleep characterized by dreaming.
  • rational operation — any of the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
  • reactive component — the component in an alternating-current circuit that does not contribute power because it is 90° out of phase with the voltage or current.
  • real-time computer — a computer that can process data or information almost immediately
  • recess appointment — a person appointed to an office by the President of the United States without approval from the Senate because the Senate is in recess
  • reciprocating pump — A reciprocating pump is a pump which uses a backward and forward movement to move a fluid.
  • recovery operation — the process of locating and retrieving bodies, esp following an explosion or natural disaster
  • reentering polygon — a polygon having one or more reentering angles.
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
  • regular expression — 1.   (text, operating system)   (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
  • reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
  • replacement engine — an engine used to replace or substitute an older or broken engine (in a vehicle, etc)
  • report an accident — If you report an accident, you inform an insurer or the police or other authorities that an accident has occurred.
  • repossession order — If a bank or building society issues a repossession order, they officially tell someone that they are going to repossess their home.
  • representativeness — a person or thing that represents another or others.
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