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18-letter words containing i, s, o, n, c, p

  • piecewise function — a function whose definition changes depending on the value of the independent variable
  • pitch-and-run shot — chip shot.
  • play second fiddle — be considered less important
  • policeman's helmet — a Himalayan balsaminaceous plant, Impatiens glandulifera, with large purplish-pink flowers, introduced into Britain
  • political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
  • political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
  • pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
  • precious moonstone — moonstone (def 1).
  • 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.
  • prison rustic work — rustication having a deeply pitted surface.
  • 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.
  • productivity bonus — an extra payment made to workers for being more productive or yielding more favourable results than normal
  • 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.
  • property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
  • 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.
  • pseudoappendicitis — inflammation of the vermiform appendix.
  • pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
  • psychotechnologist — a specialist in psychotechnology
  • publishing company — a firm which publishes books
  • 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
  • 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.
  • radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
  • 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
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
  • reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
  • resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
  • scissors-and-paste — designating or of a piece of writing that has been assembled from a variety of sources rather than by original research, often in a hasty or uninspired way
  • secondary syphilis — the second stage of syphilis, characterized by eruptions of the skin and mucous membrane.
  • 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.
  • self-contemplation — the act or process of thinking about oneself or one's values, beliefs, behavior, etc.
  • self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
  • semiprecious stone — See at semiprecious.
  • shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
  • shipping documents — documents relating to the sending of a shipment of goods, for example containing details of contents, weight, value etc.
  • shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
  • sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
  • sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
  • sonic depth finder — a sonar instrument that uses echolocation to measure depths under water.
  • spackling compound — spackle
  • spaghetti junction — an interchange, usually between motorways, in which there are a large number of underpasses and overpasses and intersecting roads used by a large volume of high-speed traffic
  • spanish succession — War of thea war (1701-14) between European powers disputing the succession to the Spanish throne
  • special collection — a collection of materials segregated from a general library collection according to form, subject, age, condition, rarity, source, or value.
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