17-letter words containing m, e, t, a, p
- open-end mortgage — a mortgage agreement against which new sums of money may be borrowed under certain conditions.
- opening arguments — the statements or arguments provided by lawyers at the beginning of a trial
- optical isomerism — stereoisomerism in which the isomers are identical in molecular weight and most chemical and physical properties but differ in their effect on the rotation of polarized light.
- over-compensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
- palaeoclimatology — the study of climates of the geological past
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- palette of narmer — a king of Egypt identified by modern scholars as the Menes of tradition and depicted as the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt on an ancient slate tablet (Narmer Palette or Palette of Narmer) c3200 b.c. with relief carvings on both sides.
- pan potentiometer — a control on a stereo sound mixing desk by means of which the relative levels in right- and left-hand channels can be adjusted and hence the apparent position of the recorded or broadcast sound source within the stereo panorama can be controlled
- parachute payment — a payment made to alleviate hardship resulting from a sudden loss of income
- parallel computer — parallel processor
- parathyroidectomy — the excision of a parathyroid gland.
- parcplace systems — (company) A company spun-off from Xerox PARC that developed the original version of VisualWorks.
- parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
- parliamentary law — the body of rules, usages, and precedents that governs proceedings of legislative and deliberative assemblies.
- parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
- pasteur treatment — Pasteur's method of preventing certain diseases, esp. rabies, by increasing the strength of successive inoculations with a specific weakened or attenuated virus
- paymaster general — a government minister responsible for making payments by government departments
- peak viewing time — the time at which the largest numbers of the population are watching television
- peer of the realm — any of a class of peers in Great Britain and Ireland entitled by heredity to sit in the House of Lords.
- penitential psalm — any of the Psalms (the 6th, 32nd, 38th, 51st, 102nd, 130th, and 143rd) that give expression to feelings of penitence and that are used in various Christian liturgical services.
- per capita income — the total income of an area or country divided by the number of people in that area or country
- per procurationem — by one acting as an agent; by proxy.
- permanent account — A permanent account is an account which carries its balance and is kept open from year to year.
- permanent address — a fixed address
- permutation group — a mathematical group whose elements are permutations and in which the product of two permutations is the same permutation as is obtained by performing them in succession.
- personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
- peterloo massacre — an incident at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, in 1819 in which a radical meeting was broken up by a cavalry charge, resulting in about 500 injuries and 11 deaths
- phantom pregnancy — the occurrence of signs of pregnancy, such as enlarged abdomen and absence of menstruation, when no embryo is present, due to hormonal imbalance
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- phumiphon aduldet — (Phumiphon Aduldet; Bhumibol Adulyadej) born 1927, king of Thailand since 1946.
- picture messaging — Picture messaging is the sending of photographs or pictures from one mobile phone to another.
- plateau's problem — the problem in the calculus of variations of finding the surface with the least area bounded by a given closed curve in space.
- police department — A police department is an official organization which is responsible for making sure that people obey the law.
- political economy — a social science dealing with political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on social institutions.
- popular etymology — folk etymology.
- portable computer — (computer) (Commonly, "laptop") A portable personal computer you can carry with one hand. Some laptops run so hot that it would be quite uncomforable to actually use them on your lap for long. The term "notebook" is often used to describe these, though it also implies a low weight (less than 2kg). A "luggable" is one you could carry in one hand but is so heavy you wouldn't want to. One that can by easily operated while held in one hand is a "palmtop". The computer considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer was the Osborne 1 but see the link below for other contenders.
- portfolio manager — a person employed by others to make investments for them
- portmanteau morph — a phonological unit of more than one morpheme, as French au to (him) from a to + le masculine article, which realizes a preposition and the definite article; a single morph that is analyzed as representing two underlying morphemes.
- postage due stamp — a stamp that is affixed to mail at a post office when prepayment of postage is insufficient, to indicate the amount that must be collected from the addressee.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- potassium acetate — a white, crystalline, deliquescent, water-soluble powder, KC 2 H 3 O 2 , used chiefly as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
- potassium bromate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, KBrO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent and as an analytical reagent.
- potassium bromide — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, KBr, having a bitter saline taste: used chiefly in the manufacture of photographic papers and plates, in engraving, and in medicine as a sedative.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- potassium oxalate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 2 C 2 O 4 ⋅H 2 O, used chiefly as a bleaching agent and in medical tests as an anticoagulant.
- potassium sulfate — a crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 2 SO 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers, alums, and mineral water, and as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
- poulter's measure — a metrical pattern using couplets having the first line in iambic hexameter, or 12 syllables, and the second in iambic heptameter, or 14 syllables.
- powder metallurgy — the art or science of manufacturing useful articles by compacting metal and other powders in a die, followed by sintering.