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17-letter words containing n, s, p

  • personality clash — friction between two people who have different personalities or points of view
  • personnel carrier — a vehicle used for transporting troops
  • personnel manager — head of Human Resources department
  • personnel officer — a worker responsible for recruiting employees and dealing with matters relating to them
  • perspicaciousness — having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning: to exhibit perspicacious judgment.
  • perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
  • petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
  • 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.
  • phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
  • philosopher kings — the Platonic ideal of a ruler, philosophically trained and enlightened.
  • photo-composition — any method of composition using photography, as composition by means of a photocomposer.
  • photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
  • photodissociation — the dissociation or breakdown of a chemical compound by radiant energy.
  • photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
  • physical handicap — loss of or failure to develop a specific bodily function or functions, whether of movement, sensation, coordination, or speech, but excluding mental impairments or disabilities
  • physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
  • physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
  • physical training — fitness coaching
  • picture messaging — Picture messaging is the sending of photographs or pictures from one mobile phone to another.
  • piece of business — business (def 10).
  • pillar-and-breast — room-and-pillar.
  • pillion passenger — a person who travels in a seat or place behind the rider of a motorcycle, scooter, horse, etc
  • pinckney's treaty — an agreement in 1795 between Spain and the U.S. by which Spain recognized the 31st parallel as the southern boundary of the U.S. and permitted free navigation of the Mississippi to American ships.
  • pincushion cactus — any of various low-growing, spiny cacti of the genus Mammillaria.
  • pincushion flower — scabious2 (def 1).
  • pink-footed goose — a Eurasian goose, Anser brachyrhynchus, having a reddish-brown head, pink legs, and a pink band on its black beak
  • pioneering spirit — a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things
  • pittsburg landing — a village in SW Tennessee, on the Tennessee River: battle of Shiloh in 1862.
  • 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.
  • planck's constant — the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, expressing the ratio of the energy of one quantum of radiation to the frequency of the radiation and approximately equal to 6.624 × 10− 27 erg-seconds. Symbol: h.
  • plastics industry — the industry that makes plastics
  • play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
  • plug and feathers — an apparatus for splitting stone, consisting of two tapered bars (feathers) inserted into a hole drilled into the stone, between which a narrow wedge (plug) is hammered to spread them.
  • plumbing fixtures — things such as pipes, sinks, toilets that are fixed in position in a building
  • pluvius insurance — insurance against rain
  • point of presence — (PoP) A site where there exists a collection of telecommunications equipment, usually modems, digital leased lines and multi-protocol routers. An Internet access provider may operate several PoPs distributed throughout their area of operation to increase the chance that their subscribers will be able to reach one with a local telephone call. The alternative is for them to use virtual PoPs (virtual points of presence) via some third party.
  • point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • point reyes lilac — a prostrate shrub, Ceanothus gloriosus, of southern California, having leathery, roundish leaves and purplish or deep-blue flowers.
  • point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • pointer swizzling — swizzle
  • poison-arrow frog — a small, bright-colored terrestrial frog of the family Dendrobatidae, of Central and South American rain forests, that secretes a virulent poison from its skin, once used on the tips of Indian hunting arrows.
  • poison-pen letter — A poison-pen letter is an unpleasant unsigned letter which is sent in order to upset someone or to cause trouble.
  • polar coordinates — Usually, polar coordinates. one of two coordinates used to locate a point in a plane by the length of its radius vector and the angle this vector makes with the polar axis (polar angle)
  • polioencephalitis — a disease characterized by inflammation of the gray matter of the brain.
  • political science — a social science dealing with political institutions and with the principles and conduct of government.
  • polystyrene chips — small pieces of polystyrene used for insulating or packing
  • poor man's orange — a grapefruit
  • portuguese guinea — former name of Guinea-Bissau.
  • positive definite — (of a quadratic form) positive for all real values of the variables, where the values are not all zero.
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