18-letter words containing n, o, c, e
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.
- phenol coefficient — the number indicating the effectiveness of a disinfectant as a germicide relative to phenol, which is arbitrarily assigned the number 1: based on the time required to kill a given quantity of a specific type of bacteria.
- phoenician juniper — a type of juniper that is found in the Mediterranean region
- photodecomposition — the breaking down of molecules by radiant energy.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- piecewise function — a function whose definition changes depending on the value of the independent variable
- 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.
- 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
- pneumatic conveyor — a tube through which powdered or granular material, such as cement, grain, etc is transported by a flow of air
- point of reference — A point of reference is something which you use to help you understand a situation or communicate with someone.
- policeman's helmet — a Himalayan balsaminaceous plant, Impatiens glandulifera, with large purplish-pink flowers, introduced into Britain
- political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
- political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
- 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)
- pollen mother cell — one of the mother cells that produce four microspores by meiosis.
- polystyrene cement — a purpose-made adhesive for fixing rigid polystyrene
- polyvinyl chloride — a white, water-insoluble, thermoplastic resin, derived by the polymerization of vinyl chloride: used chiefly for thin coatings, insulation, and pipings.
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- population balance — A population balance is a model showing particle sizes during a grinding process, which is used when designing a process.
- porcupine anteater — an echidna or spiny anteater.
- portion-controlled — being a standardized portion of food: The restaurant uses frozen, portion-controlled entrées.
- 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.
- precious moonstone — moonstone (def 1).
- present continuous — a verb form consisting of an auxiliary be in the present tense followed by a present participle and used especially to indicate that a present action or event is in progress, being repeated, or of a temporary nature or to express the future.
- price on sb's head — If there is a price on someone 's head, an amount of money has been offered for the capture or killing of that person.
- prince of darkness — Satan.
- process identifier — (operating system) (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
- process scheduling — multitasking
- processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
- product acceptance — the verification or acceptance that a manufactured item meets required specifications or standards and is usable for its purpose
- production manager — a supervisor of the budget, crew and other details in the production of a film or play
- progressive coding — (graphics, file format, algorithm) (Or "interlacing") An aspect of a graphics storage format or transmission algorithm that treats bitmap image data non-sequentially in such a way that later data adds progressively greater resolution to an already full-size image. This contrasts with sequential coding. Progressive coding is useful when an image is being sent across a slow communications channel, such as the Internet, as the low-resolution image may be sufficient to allow the user to decide not to wait for the rest of the file to be received. In an interlaced GIF89 image, the pixels in a row are stored sequentially but the rows are stored in interlaced order, e.g. 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 6, 8, 10, 14, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Each vertical scan adds rows in the middle of the gaps left by the previous one. Interlacing is also supported by other formats. JPEG supports a functionally similar concept known as Progressive JPEG. [How does the algorithm differ?] See also progressive/sequential coding.
- project management — leadership of a task or programme
- projection machine — an apparatus that projects motion pictures; projector.
- projection printer — enlarger.
- propaganda machine — the group of people, publications, etc, such as of a government, country etc, responsible for the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
- protein deficiency — a lack or insuffiency of protein
- protocol converter — (networking) A device or program to translate between different protocols which serve similar functions (e.g. TCP and TP4). Some call this a "gateway", though others use that term for other kinds of internetworking device.
- provincetown print — a print made from a woodblock incised with grooves that serve to separate the colors being used and to leave white lines highlighting the design.
- provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
- pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
- pseudoappendicitis — inflammation of the vermiform appendix.
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.