17-letter words containing n, a, o, m
- 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.
- phenylformic acid — benzoic acid.
- phumiphon aduldet — (Phumiphon Aduldet; Bhumibol Adulyadej) born 1927, king of Thailand since 1946.
- 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.
- ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
- 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.
- polymorphonuclear — (of a leukocyte) having a lobulate nucleus.
- poor man's orange — a grapefruit
- 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.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- 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.
- pre-communication — the act or process of communicating; fact of being communicated.
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- prealternate molt — the molt by which many birds replace only some and rarely all of the feathers assumed at the prebasic molt, usually occurring prior to breeding.
- premonstratensian — a member of a religious order founded at Prémontré in N France in 1120 by St Norbert (about 1080–1134)
- presentationalism — a style of production in which the audience is addressed directly with songs, skits, exposition, etc., and no attempt is made at realism.
- primary dentition — the deciduous dentition
- primary education — junior, elementary schooling
- primary intention — Logic. See under intention (def 5a).
- primary-intention — an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.
- pro forma invoice — an invoice issued before an order is placed or before the goods are delivered giving all the details and the cost of the goods
- pro-environmental — the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.
- product placement — Product placement is a form of advertising in which a company has its product placed where it can be clearly seen during a film or television programme.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- program generator — a computer program that can be used to help to create other computer programs
- program statement — a single instruction in a computer program
- programme planner — someone who creates plans or schedules in regards to their line of work or occupation
- programming fluid — (jargon) (Or "wirewater") Coffee, unleaded coffee (decaffeinated), Cola, or any caffeinacious stimulant. Many hackers consider these essential for those all-night hacking runs.
- promenade concert — a concert at which some of the audience stand rather than sit
- promotional event — occasion organized to market or advertise sth
- pronominalization — to replace (a noun or noun phrase) with a pronoun.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- put a dampener on — To put a dampener on something means the same as to put a damper on it.
- put on the market — offer for sale
- quantum computing — quantum computer
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- recoil escapement — anchor escapement.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- 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.
- reduction formula — a formula, such as sin (90° ± A) = cos A, expressing the values of a trigonometric function of any angle greater than 90° in terms of a function of an acute angle
- renaissance woman — a woman who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field.
- repertory company — repertory (def 2).
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- role-playing game — a game in which participants adopt the roles of imaginary characters in an adventure under the direction of a Game Master.
- rom kernel manual — (publication) (RKM) A series of books or files for developers for the Amiga computer, containing information about the operating system kernel stored in ROM.