17-letter words containing i, y, e, a
- polyvinyl acetate — a colorless, odorless, nontoxic, transparent, thermoplastic, water-insoluble resin used as an adhesive in certain paints and as an intermediate in the synthesis of polyvinyl acetal and polyvinyl alcohol.
- positive polarity — the grammatical characteristic of a word or phrase, such as delicious or rather, that may normally only be used in a semantically or syntactically positive or affirmative context
- postal stationery — an envelope, postal card, wrapper, or aérogramme, with the stamp printed directly on the paper.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- pre-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- predatory pricing — If a company practises predatory pricing, it charges a much lower price for its products or services than its competitors in order to force them out of the market.
- prelingually deaf — deaf from birth or having acquired deafness before learning to speak
- presentation copy — a copy of a book given by the publisher or author
- primary dentition — the deciduous dentition
- primary education — junior, elementary schooling
- primary intention — Logic. See under intention (def 5a).
- primary processes — the generally unorganized mental activity characteristic of the unconscious and occurring in dreams, fantasies, and related processes.
- primary qualities — any of the qualities inherent in an object, namely quantity, extent, figure, solidity, and motion or rest.
- primary structure — Biochemistry. the basic sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide or protein.
- primary-intention — an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.
- private secretary — a person who attends to the individual or confidential correspondence, files, etc., of a business executive, official, or the like.
- probability curve — a curve that describes the distribution of probability over the values of a random variable.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- proficiency badge — an insignia or device granted by the Girl Scouts and worn especially on a uniform to indicate special achievement.
- progressive party — a political party formed in 1912 under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, advocating popular control of government, direct primaries, the initiative, the referendum, woman suffrage, etc.
- proprietary brand — a brand of product that is privately owned and controlled
- psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
- psychotherapeutic — psychotherapy.
- pull your head in — be quiet!
- purely and simply — You use purely and simply to emphasize that the thing you are mentioning is the only thing involved.
- pyroligneous acid — a yellowish, acidic, water-soluble liquid, containing about 10 percent acetic acid, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood: used for smoking meats.
- quality assurance — a system for ensuring a desired level of quality in the development, production, or delivery of products and services: Quality assurance for nursing homes begins with a set of standards. Abbreviation: QA.
- quality newspaper — a more serious newspaper which gives detailed accounts of world events, as well as reports on business, culture, and society
- quality paperback — a softbound book that is usually larger and more expensive than a mass market paperback and is sold primarily in bookstores as a trade book.
- quantity surveyor — A quantity surveyor is a person who calculates the cost and amount of materials and workers needed for a job such as building a house or a road.
- quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
- radial (ply) tire — a motor vehicle tire having a foundation of plies of rubberized cords running at right angles to the center line of the tread: it provides better handling, etc. than a bias ply tire
- radial keratotomy — a surgical technique for correcting nearsightedness by making a series of spokelike incisions in the cornea to change its shape and focusing properties.
- radiant intensity — a measure of the amount of radiation emitted from a point expressed as the radiant flux per unit solid angle leaving this source
- radiation therapy — x-rays used as treatment
- radioactive decay — decay (def 8).
- railway timetable — a list of railway journeys arranged according to the time when they begin and end
- raynaud's disease — a vascular disorder of unknown cause, characterized by recurrent episodes of blanching and numbness of the fingers and toes and sometimes the tip of the nose and ears, usually triggered by stress or exposure to cold.
- read-write memory — a type of computer memory that you can write to as well as read from
- ready and waiting — If you want to emphasize that a person is properly prepared for something, or that something can now be used, you can say that they are ready and waiting.
- reality principle — the motivating force or mechanism by which the child, who has previously sought immediate gratification of all wishes, realizes that gratification must sometimes be deferred or forgone.
- recrystallization — to become crystallized again.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- reference library — A reference library is a library that contains books which you can look at in the library itself but which you cannot borrow.
- refractory period — a short period after a nerve or muscle cell fires during which the cell cannot respond to additional stimulation.
- relative humidity — the amount of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount that the air could hold at the given temperature; the ratio of the actual water vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure. Abbreviation: RH, rh.
- relative majority — the excess of votes or seats won by the winner of an election over the runner-up when no candidate or party has more than 50 per cent
- respiratory chain — a series of mitochondrial proteins that transport electrons of hydrogen, released in the Krebs cycle, from acetyl coenzyme A to inhaled oxygen to form H 2 O: the energy released in the process is conserved as ATP.
- respiratory tract — the passages through which air enters and leaves the body
- reticulate python — a python, Python reticulatus, of southeastern Asia and the East Indies, sometimes growing to a length of 32 feet (10 meters): usually considered to be the largest snake in the world.