17-letter words containing m, o, p, s
- morphic resonance — the idea that, through a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration, an event or act can lead to similar events or acts in the future or an idea conceived in one mind can then arise in another
- mother spleenwort — a fern, Asplenium bulbiferum, of tropical Africa and Australasia, the fronds often bearing bulbils that sprout into new plants while still attached, grown as an ornamental.
- mount robson park — a national park in the Rocky Mountains of E British Columbia, Canada.
- multiple exposure — the filming of more than one scene in a single frame
- muscle dysmorphia — a mental disorder primarily affecting males, characterized by obsessions about a perceived lack of muscularity, leading to compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, etc. Compare body dysmorphic disorder.
- neo-expressionism — an art movement, chiefly in painting, that developed in Germany, Italy, and the U.S. in the late 1970s, emphasized large heavy forms and thick impasto, and typically dealt with historical narrative in terms of symbolism, allegory, and myth.
- neo-impressionism — the theory and practice of a group of post-impressionists of about the middle 1880s, characterized chiefly by a systematic juxtaposition of dots or points of pure color according to a concept of the optical mixture of hues.
- new expressionism — neo-expressionism.
- non compos mentis — not of sound mind; mentally incapable of managing one's affairs.
- non-comprehension — the act or process of comprehending.
- non-thermoplastic — soft and pliable when heated, as some plastics, without any change of the inherent properties.
- nonaccomplishment — Something that does not achieve the intended goal.
- old contemptibles — the British expeditionary force to France in 1914
- old people's home — An old people's home is a place where old people live and are cared for when they are too old to look after themselves.
- olympic mountains — a mountain range in NW Washington: part of the Coast Range. Highest peak: Mount Olympus, 2427 m (7965 ft)
- olympic peninsula — a large peninsula of W Washington
- omphalomesenteric — (anatomy) Of or pertaining to the umbilicus and mesentery.
- on speaking terms — the act, utterance, or discourse of a person who speaks.
- one-time password — (security) (OTP) A security system that requires a new password every time a user authenticates themselves, thus protecting against an intruder replaying an intercepted password. OTP generates passwords using either the MD4 or MD5 hashing algorithms. The equivalent term "S/Key", developed by Bellcore, is a trademark of Telcordia Technologies, so the name OTP is used increasingly. See RFC 1760 - "The S/KEY One-Time Password System" and RFC 1938 - "A One-Time Password System".
- opening arguments — the statements or arguments provided by lawyers at the beginning of a trial
- optical astronomy — the branch of observational astronomy using telescopes to observe or photograph celestial objects in visible light.
- 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.
- over-presumptuous — full of, characterized by, or showing presumption or readiness to presume in conduct or thought, as by saying or doing something without right or permission.
- overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
- pair of compasses — compass (def 7)
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- 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
- parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
- pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
- passamaquoddy bay — an inlet of the Bay of Fundy, between Maine and New Brunswick, at the mouth of the St. Croix River.
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- pay someone's way — to pay someone's share of the expenses
- performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
- performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
- pernicious anemia — Pernicious anemia is a very severe blood disease.
- persistent memory — non-volatile storage
- 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.
- personnel manager — head of Human Resources department
- 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
- 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.
- phlebotomus fever — sandfly fever.
- photo-composition — any method of composition using photography, as composition by means of a photocomposer.
- photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
- plains of abraham — a high plain adjoining the city of Quebec, Canada: battlefield where the English under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in 1759.
- 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.
- ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
- poor man's orange — a grapefruit
- 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.
- postimpressionism — a varied development of Impressionism by a group of painters chiefly between 1880 and 1900 stressing formal structure, as with Cézanne and Seurat, or the expressive possibilities of form and color, as with Van Gogh and Gauguin.