23-letter words containing n, o, c, m
- performance-related pay — salary based on individual assessment
- peroxymonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- pest control department — the local government department responsible for controlling such pests as rats and mice
- pharmaceuticals company — a company specialising in developing and marketing pharmaceuticals
- photoelectric magnitude — the magnitude of a star determined using a photometer plus a filter to select light or other radiation of the desired wavelength
- pin someone's ears back — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
- plain old documentation — (text) (pod, occasionally "POD") A simple markup language used to embed documentation, literate programming-style, in Perl programs. Pod readers and converters are part of the standard Perl distribution and the documentation provided with Perl is all in pod format.
- play by electronic mail — (games) A kind of game where the players use electronic mail to communicate. This may be done via a human moderator or an automatic mailing list exploder on some central machine or it may be fully distributed with each player just addressing his mail to all other players. This is a natural extension of "play by mail" games conducted via snail mail.
- positive discrimination — special opportunities
- postcode discrimination — discrimination on the basis of the area where someone lives, with relation to employment, credit rating, etc
- private limited company — a company whose shares can be bought by the public
- probabilistic automaton — nondeterministic automaton
- process gas compression — Process gas compression is a procedure for pressurizing and circulating gas through a process by compressing it in a cylinder, to enhance conditions for chemical reaction.
- professional misconduct — a violation of the rules or boundaries set by the governing body of a profession
- provocative maintenance — [Common ironic mutation of "preventive maintenance"] Actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; such "maintenance" often *induces* problems, or otherwise results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also scratch monkey.
- psychomotor retardation — a generalized slowing of psychological and physical activity, frequently occurring as a symptom of severe depression.
- public enemy number one — (not in official use) a criminal at the top of the FBI's list of the ten most wanted criminals.
- publicly-quoted company — a company whose shares are traded on a stock exchange
- puerto rican royal palm — a feather palm, Roystonea borinquena, of Puerto Rico and St. Croix, having leaves about 10 feet (3 meters) long and egg-shaped, yellowish-brown fruit.
- quantum electrodynamics — the quantum field theory that deals with the electromagnetic field and its interaction with electrons and positrons. Abbreviation: QED.
- quantum flavourdynamics — a gauge theory of the electromagnetic and weak interactions
- rate-of-climb indicator — a flight instrument that indicates the rate of climb or descent of an aircraft.
- real simple syndication — (spelling) Illiterate form of Really Simple Syndication.
- revision control system — (software, tool) (RCS) A version control system that automates the storing, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for text that is revised frequently, for example programs, documentation, graphics, papers, and form letters.
- rocky mountain beeplant — a rank-smelling plant, Cleome serrulata, of the caper family, native to the western U.S., having showy, dense clusters of pink or white flowers, frequented by bees.
- sb doesn't miss a trick — If you say that someone does not miss a trick, you mean that they always know what is happening and take advantage of every situation.
- secondary modern school — (formerly) a secondary school offering a more technical or practical and less academic education than a grammar school
- sheltered accommodation — housing specially designed to provide a safe environment for the elderly, handicapped, or disabled, often with some shared facilities and a caretaker
- sierra madre occidental — the system of mountains in the west of Mexico
- silicone breast implant — silicone filled bags that are implanted into a woman in order to increase the size of her breasts
- small-scale integration — SSI.
- smash someone's face in — to beat someone severely
- social insurance number — a nine-digit number used by the federal government to identify a citizen
- social security payment — a payment of social security made to an individual
- somaliland protectorate — official name of the former British Somaliland.
- specialite de la maison — the specialty of the house (used in referring to the most important dish served by a restaurant).
- squamous cell carcinoma — a carcinoma that arises from squamous epithelium in the skin and sometimes in the mucous membranes.
- state coordinate system — a system of right-angled planar coordinates established by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey for each state in the United States.
- statement of cash flows — A statement of cash flows is a financial statement that shows the amounts of cash that came into and went out of a company over a particular period of time.
- stick to someone's ribs — to be nourishing and satisfying
- stream of consciousness — unpunctuated prose
- stream-of-consciousness — of, relating to, or characterized by a manner of writing in which a character's thoughts or perceptions are presented as occurring in random form, without regard for logical sequences, syntactic structure, distinctions between various levels of reality, or the like: a stream-of-consciousness novel; a stream-of-consciousness technique.
- structural unemployment — unemployment caused by basic changes in the overall economy, as in demographics, technology, or industrial organization.
- symbolic interactionism — a theory that human interaction and communication is facilitated by words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired conventionalized meanings.
- system control language — (language) (SCL) The command language for the VME/B operating system on the ICL2900. SCL was block structured and supported strings, lists of strings ("superstrings"), integer, Boolean, and array types. You could trigger a block whenever a condition on a variable value occured. It supported macros and default arguments. Commands were treated like procedure calls.
- the metropolitan police — the police organization that is responsible for Greater London, excluding the City of London
- the scottish parliament — the devolved national legislature of Scotland, located in Edinburgh
- thompson submachine gun — a portable, .45-caliber, automatic weapon designed to be fired from the shoulder or hip.
- to blow someone's cover — To blow someone's cover means to cause their true identity or the true nature of their work to be revealed.
- to call someone's bluff — If you call someone's bluff, you tell them to do what they have been threatening to do, because you are sure that they will not really do it.