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20-letter words containing n, r, i

  • polaroid land camera — any of several types of camera yielding a finished print by means of a special developing and processing technique that occurs inside the camera and takes only a few seconds to complete
  • polyanthus narcissus — a Eurasian amaryllidaceous plant, Narcissus tazetta, having clusters of small yellow or white fragrant flowers
  • polyconic projection — a conic projection in which the parallels are arcs of circles that are not concentric but are equally spaced along the central straight meridian, all other meridians being curves equally spaced along the parallels.
  • polymorphic function — a function in a computer program that can deal with a number of different types of data
  • polyvinylidene resin — any of the class of thermoplastic resins derived by the polymerization or copolymerization of a polyvinylidene compound, used similarly to the polyvinyl resins.
  • polyvinylpyrrolidone — a white, amorphous, water-soluble powder, (C 6 H 9 NO) n , used chiefly as a vehicle in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.
  • poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
  • population inversion — a condition of matter in which more electrons are in a high energy state than in a lower energy state, as is required for the operation of a laser.
  • population parameter — a quantity or statistical measure that, for a given population, is fixed and that is used as the value of a variable in some general distribution or frequency function to make it descriptive of that population: The mean and variance of a population are population parameters.
  • porcupine provisions — provisions, such as poison pills or staggered directorships, made in the bylaws of a company to deter takeover bids
  • portfolio employment — the practice of working for several employers simultaneously rather than working full-time for a single employer
  • post-synchronization — the recording of dialogue and sound effects in synchronization with the picture after the film has been shot.
  • postal delivery zone — zone (def 10).
  • postcode prescribing — the practice of prescribing more or less expensive and effective medical treatments to patients depending on where they live in a country, and which treatments their health board is willing and able to provide
  • postnatal depression — a form of clinical depression that occurs in mothers after the birth of a baby
  • potential difference — voltage
  • pound cost averaging — a method of accumulating capital by investing a fixed sum in a particular security at regular intervals, in order to achieve an average purchase price below the arithmetic average of the market prices on the purchase dates
  • power of appointment — the authority granted by a donor to a donee to select the person or persons who are to enjoy property rights or income upon the death of the donor or of the donee or after the termination of existing rights or interests.
  • precision instrument — finely-tuned device
  • predicate nominative — (in Latin, Greek, and certain other languages) a predicate noun or adjective in the nominative case.
  • premenstrual tension — Premenstrual tension is the same as premenstrual syndrome. The abbreviation PMT is often used.
  • prenuptial agreement — A prenuptial agreement is a written contract made between a man and a woman before they marry, in which they state how their assets such as property and money should be divided if they get divorced.
  • prepositional phrase — a phrase consisting of a preposition, its object, which is usually a noun or a pronoun, and any modifiers of the object, as in the gray desk I use.
  • prescription glasses — corrective spectacles
  • presentation manager — The elephantine graphical user interface to the OS/2 operating system.
  • preservation society — a society dedicated to the preservation of something, especially a building, environment, or animal
  • presidential primary — a direct primary for the selection of state delegates to a national party convention and the expression of preference for a U.S. presidential nominee.
  • preventive detention — the holding of someone in jail or in an institution because he or she is regarded as a danger to the community.
  • price discrimination — the practice of offering identical goods to different buyers at different prices, when the goods cost the same.
  • price-dividend ratio — the ratio of the price of a share on a stock exchange to the dividends per share paid in the previous year, used as a measure of a company's potential as an investment
  • price-earnings ratio — the current price of a share of common stock divided by earnings per share over a 12-month period, often used in stock evaluation. Abbreviation: p/e.
  • pride of the morning — light mist or precipitation observed at sea in the morning and regarded as indicating a fine day.
  • prima facie evidence — evidence sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of fact unless rebutted.
  • prima-facie evidence — evidence that is sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of the truth of a fact unless controverted
  • prime number theorem — the theorem that the number of prime numbers less than or equal to a given number is approximately equal to the given number divided by its natural logarithm.
  • primitive polynomial — a polynomial that has content equal to 1. Compare content1 (def 11a).
  • prince edward island — an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, forming a province of Canada: 2184 sq. mi. (5655 sq. km). Capital: Charlottetown.
  • prince rupert's drop — a glass bead in the shape of a teardrop, a by-product of the glass-making process, formed by molten glass falling into water. The body of the drop can withstand great force, for example a hammer blow, but the whole will explode if the tail is nipped or the surface scored
  • prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
  • princeton university — (body, education)   Chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was British North America's fourth college. First located in Elizabeth, then in Newark, the College moved to Princeton in 1756. The College was housed in Nassau Hall, newly built on land donated by Nathaniel and Rebeckah FitzRandolph. Nassau Hall contained the entire College for nearly half a century. The College was officially renamed Princeton University in 1896; five years later in 1900 the Graduate School was established. Fully coeducational since 1969, Princeton now enrolls approximately 6,400 students (4,535 undergraduates and 1,866 graduate students). The ratio of full-time students to faculty members (in full-time equivalents) is eight to one. Today Princeton's main campus in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township consists of more than 5.5 million square feet of space in 160 buildings on 600 acres. The University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro consists of one million square feet of space in four complexes on 340 acres. As Mercer County's largest private employer and one of the largest in the Mercer/Middlesex/Somerset County region, with approximately 4,830 permanent employees - including more than 1,000 faculty members - the University plays a major role in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the region.
  • priority inheritance — (parallel)   A technique for avoiding priority inversion by temporarily raising the prioriry of all processes that want to access a shared resource to the highest priority level of any of them. Priority inversion occurs where a low priority process, L is holding a resource required by a high priority process, H, but L is not running because a medium priority process, M is running. Under priority inheritance, L temporarily inherits H's priority, allowing L to run and release the resource H is waiting for. For example, an ambulance (H) is stuck behind a lorry (L) waiting at a junction (the shared resource) for a gap in a line of cars (M) using the junction. Applying priority inheritance, the cars give way to the lorry as they would to the ambulance, thus allowing the lorry and then the ambulance to use the junction.
  • private investigator — private detective. Abbreviation: PI, p.i., P.I.
  • proactive inhibition — the tendency for earlier memories to interfere with the retrieval of material learned later
  • probability function — the function the values of which are probabilities of the distinct outcomes of a discrete random variable
  • production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
  • programming language — a high-level language used to write computer programs, as COBOL or BASIC, or, sometimes, an assembly language.
  • prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
  • proof of the pudding — the true value or quality of something, as seen when it is experienced, tried, or put to use: The proof of the pudding for a business is what customers say about it.
  • property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
  • proportional counter — a radiation counter in which the strength of each electric pulse generated per count is proportional to the energy of the particle or photon producing the pulse, alpha particles producing a different electric pulse from beta rays.
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