17-letter words containing o, m, t
- organized militia — a former military organization functioning under both state and federal authority.
- orthogonal matrix — a matrix that is the inverse of its transpose so that any two rows or any two columns are orthogonal vectors
- otto von bismarck — Otto von [ot-oh von;; German aw-toh fuh n] /ˈɒt oʊ vɒn;; German ˈɔ toʊ fən/ (Show IPA), 1815–98, German statesman: first chancellor of modern German Empire 1871–90.
- out of commission — the act of committing or entrusting a person, group, etc., with supervisory power or authority.
- out of harm's way — If someone or something is out of harm's way, they are in a safe place away from danger or from the possibility of being damaged.
- out of one's mind — (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
- outline agreement — a contract, etc, setting out the preliminary terms or guidelines for an agreement; a preliminary agreement
- over-compensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- over-presumptuous — full of, characterized by, or showing presumption or readiness to presume in conduct or thought, as by saying or doing something without right or permission.
- overdetermination — the concept that a single emotional symptom or event, as a dream or a slip of the tongue, may be caused by more than one factor.
- overhead camshaft — a camshaft in an automotive engine that is located in the cylinder head over the engine block rather than in the block. Abbreviation: OHC.
- overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
- oyer and terminer — (in some U.S. states) any of various higher criminal courts.
- palaeoclimatology — the study of climates of the geological past
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- palette of narmer — a king of Egypt identified by modern scholars as the Menes of tradition and depicted as the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt on an ancient slate tablet (Narmer Palette or Palette of Narmer) c3200 b.c. with relief carvings on both sides.
- pan potentiometer — a control on a stereo sound mixing desk by means of which the relative levels in right- and left-hand channels can be adjusted and hence the apparent position of the recorded or broadcast sound source within the stereo panorama can be controlled
- parallel computer — parallel processor
- parathyroidectomy — the excision of a parathyroid gland.
- parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
- parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
- pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- peer of the realm — any of a class of peers in Great Britain and Ireland entitled by heredity to sit in the House of Lords.
- per capita income — the total income of an area or country divided by the number of people in that area or country
- per procurationem — by one acting as an agent; by proxy.
- permanent account — A permanent account is an account which carries its balance and is kept open from year to year.
- permutation group — a mathematical group whose elements are permutations and in which the product of two permutations is the same permutation as is obtained by performing them in succession.
- persistent memory — non-volatile storage
- personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
- peterloo massacre — an incident at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, in 1819 in which a radical meeting was broken up by a cavalry charge, resulting in about 500 injuries and 11 deaths
- phantom limb pain — a phenomenon characterized by the experience of pain, discomfort, or other sensation in the area of a missing limb or other body part, as a breast.
- phantom pregnancy — the occurrence of signs of pregnancy, such as enlarged abdomen and absence of menstruation, when no embryo is present, due to hormonal imbalance
- 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.
- phlebotomus fever — sandfly fever.
- photo-composition — any method of composition using photography, as composition by means of a photocomposer.
- photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
- phumiphon aduldet — (Phumiphon Aduldet; Bhumibol Adulyadej) born 1927, king of Thailand since 1946.
- plateau's problem — the problem in the calculus of variations of finding the surface with the least area bounded by a given closed curve in space.
- plymouth brethren — a religious sect founded c. 1827, strongly Puritanical in outlook and prohibiting many secular occupations for its members. It combines elements of Calvinism, Pietism, and millenarianism, and has no organized ministry
- police department — A police department is an official organization which is responsible for making sure that people obey the law.
- political economy — a social science dealing with political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on social institutions.
- popular etymology — folk etymology.
- portable computer — (computer) (Commonly, "laptop") A portable personal computer you can carry with one hand. Some laptops run so hot that it would be quite uncomforable to actually use them on your lap for long. The term "notebook" is often used to describe these, though it also implies a low weight (less than 2kg). A "luggable" is one you could carry in one hand but is so heavy you wouldn't want to. One that can by easily operated while held in one hand is a "palmtop". The computer considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer was the Osborne 1 but see the link below for other contenders.
- portfolio manager — a person employed by others to make investments for them
- portmanteau morph — a phonological unit of more than one morpheme, as French au to (him) from a to + le masculine article, which realizes a preposition and the definite article; a single morph that is analyzed as representing two underlying morphemes.
- postage due stamp — a stamp that is affixed to mail at a post office when prepayment of postage is insufficient, to indicate the amount that must be collected from the addressee.
- postimpressionism — a varied development of Impressionism by a group of painters chiefly between 1880 and 1900 stressing formal structure, as with Cézanne and Seurat, or the expressive possibilities of form and color, as with Van Gogh and Gauguin.
- postmillennialism — the doctrine or belief that the second coming of Christ will follow the millennium.
- poststructuralism — a variation of structuralism, often seen as a critique, emphasizing plurality of meaning and instability of concepts that structuralism uses to define society, language, etc.