18-letter words containing n, p, l
- postmaster general — the executive head of the postal system of a country.
- postmillenarianism — postmillennialism.
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
- 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.
- power-on self-test — (hardware, testing) (POST) A sequence of diagnostic tests that are run automatically by a device when the power is turned on. In a personal computer a typical POST sequence does the following: - checks that the system board is working - checks that the memory is working - compares the current system configuration with that recorded by the PC's configuration program to see if anything has been added or removed or broken - starts the video operation - checks that the diskette drive, hard disk drive, CD-ROM drive, and any other drives that may be installed are working. When POST is finished, typically it will beep, and then let your operating system start to boot. If POST finds an error, it may beep more than once (or possibly not at all if it is your PC speaker that is broken) and display a POST error message. These messages are often nothing more than a single ominous number. Some common numbers and their meanings are: 161 Dead battery (get a new battery for the system board) 162 Configuration changed (you added some memory or a new card to the PC) 301 Keyboard error (take the book off the corner of the keyboard) Because a successful POST indicates that the system is restored to known state, turning the power off and on is a standard way to reset a system whose software has hung. Compare 120 reset, Big Red Switch, power cycle.
- pre-filled syringe — A pre-filled syringe is a disposable syringe that is supplied already loaded with the substance to be injected.
- preantepenultimate — third from the end.
- 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.
- prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
- prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
- presenile dementia — a form of dementia, of unknown cause, starting before a person is old
- present participle — Grammar. a participle form, in English having the suffix -ing, denoting repetition or duration of an activity or event: used as an adjective, as in the growing weeds, and in forming progressive verb forms, as in The weeds are growing.
- presentation layer — (networking) The second highest layer (layer 6) in the OSI seven layer model. Performs functions such as text compression, code or format conversion to try to smooth out differences between hosts. Allows incompatible processes in the application layer to communicate via the session layer. Documents: ITU Rec. X.226 (ISO 8823), ITU Rec. X.216 (ISO 8822).
- presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
- presumption of law — a presumption based upon a policy of law or a general rule and not upon the facts or evidence in an individual case.
- presuppositionless — to suppose or assume beforehand; take for granted in advance.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
- principal diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- principal meridian — a meridian line accurately laid out to serve as the reference meridian in land survey
- prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
- process scheduling — multitasking
- production control — the planning and supervision of manufacturing activities to ensure that goods will be produced on time at the lowest possible cost.
- programme planning — the act of creating plans or schedules, esp in relation to your occupation
- programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
- proportional limit — elastic limit.
- 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.
- 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.
- protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
- provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- psychotechnologist — a specialist in psychotechnology
- public convenience — a rest room, especially at a large public place, as at a railroad station.
- public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
- public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
- public expenditure — spending by central government, local authorities, and public corporations
- publicity campaign — an effort to convey information to the public
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- pull one's head in — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- pull one's punches — to restrain the force of one's criticisms or actions
- pull someone's leg — either of the two lower limbs of a biped, as a human being, or any of the paired limbs of an animal, arthropod, etc., that support and move the body.
- pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
- radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
- rail rapid transit — a system of rail transit within an urban area that has exclusive right of way either below, above, or on the ground and so is capable of relatively high operating speed. Abbreviation: RRT.