18-letter words containing l, a, d, e, n
- oak-leaf hydrangea — a shrub, Hydrangea quercifolia, of the southeastern U.S., having lobed leaves and pyramidal clusters of white flowers.
- oedipus at colonus — a tragedy by Sophocles, written toward the end of his life and produced posthumously in 401? b.c.
- old man of the sea — (in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments) an old man who clung to the shoulders of Sindbad the Sailor for many days and nights.
- on delicate ground — in a situation requiring tact
- on the danger list — critically ill in hospital
- one false move and — You use one false move to introduce the very bad or serious consequences which will result if someone makes a mistake, even a very small one.
- one's heart bleeds — used to express sympathetic grief, but often used ironically
- operation overlord — the codename for the Allied invasion (June 1944) of northern France
- organized religion — institutionalized religion, usually with a hierarchical clergy and rules to govern the means by which adherents participate
- oriental almandine — a variety of corundum resembling almandine in colour and used as a gemstone
- palm beach gardens — a city in SE Florida, near North Palm Beach.
- parallel reduction — A form of applicative order reduction in which all redexes in an expression are reduced simultaneously. Variants include parallel outermost reduction and lenient reduction. See normal order reduction.
- paraurethral gland — any of a group of vestigial glands located in the posterior wall of the urethra in women.
- pectoral sandpiper — an American sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, the male of which, when courting, inflates its chest conspicuously.
- pennsylvania dutch — the descendants of 17th- and 18th-century settlers in Pennsylvania from southwest Germany and Switzerland.
- perceptual defence — the process by which it is thought that certain stimuli are either not perceived or are distorted due to their offensive, unpleasant, or threatening nature
- perpetual calendar — a calendar devised to be used for many years, as in determining the day of the week on which a given date falls.
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- pescadores-islands — (used with a plural verb) Penghu.
- 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
- phenylacetaldehyde — a colorless, oily, water-insoluble liquid, C 3 H 1 4 O, having a hyacinthlike odor: used chiefly in perfumery.
- phosphatidylserine — any of a class of phospholipids occurring in biological membranes and fats
- phthalic anhydride — a white, crystalline, slightly water-soluble solid, C 8 H 4 O 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes, alkyd resins, and plasticizers.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- 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.
- planned parenthood — an organization that gives out information on the planning of the number and spacing of the births of one's children, as through the use of birth-control measures
- plate-glass window — a window that has glass which has been formed by rolling
- play cat and mouse — Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- point d'angleterre — a bobbin lace in which the design is worked out with either a needle or bobbin.
- politically-minded — (of a person or group of people) interested in the way power is achieved and used in a country or society (through government, policy-making, etc)
- population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
- pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- presenile dementia — a form of dementia, of unknown cause, starting before a person is old
- presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- principal meridian — a meridian line accurately laid out to serve as the reference meridian in land survey
- prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- pull one's head in — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- 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
- radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
- random walk theory — the theory that the future movement of share prices does not reflect past movements and therefore will not follow a discernible pattern
- redevelopment area — an urban area in which all or most of the buildings are demolished and rebuilt
- regular hexahedron — a solid cube with six square faces