18-letter words containing o, n, a, c, l
- on delicate ground — in a situation requiring tact
- once in a lifetime — extremely rarely
- open-collar worker — (job) Someone who works at home or telecommutes.
- optical brightener — an additive that dyes and brightens fabric or paper
- optical soundtrack — the final soundtrack on a motion picture, which appears as a band of black and white serrations along a strip of film to the left of the composite print. Light is shined through the serrations and is converted to audible sound.
- oracle corporation — (company) The world's leading supplier of information management software. The company, worth $2 billion, offers its products, along with related consulting, education and support services in more than 90 countries around the world. Oracle is best known for its database management systems vendor and relational DBMS products. Oracle develops and markets Oracle Media Server and the Oracle7 family of software products for database management; Co-operative Development Environment and Oracle Co-operative Applications Oracle software runs on personal digital assistants, set-top boxs, IBM PCs, workstations, minicomputers, mainframes and massively parallel computers. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems on 2009-04-20. See also Adaptable User Interface, Bookviewer, CASE*Method, Component Integration Laboratories, DDE Manager, Online Media, Oracle Card, Oracle*CASE, siod. Address: Redwood Shores, CA, USA.
- oral contraceptive — birth-control pill.
- organic solidarity — social cohesiveness that is based on division of labor and interdependence and is characteristic of complex, industrial societies.
- oriental cat's-eye — a chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl, used as a gem.
- oriental cockroach — a dark-brown cockroach, Blatta orientalis, thought to have originated in Asia but now nearly cosmopolitan in distribution.
- oriental scops owl — any of a group of small owls having ear tufts and a whistling call, especially Otus scops (Old World scops owl) and O. sunia (Oriental scops owl)
- oscillating engine — a steam engine having piston rods connected directly to the crankshaft and cylinders oscillating on trunnions.
- out of circulation — If someone is out of circulation, they do not appear in public or at social gatherings for a period of time. You can also say that someone is out of circulation when they are in prison.
- overcapitalization — The state of being overcapitalized.
- overspecialization — excessive specialization, as in a field of study.
- oxalosuccinic acid — an organic acid, C 6 H 6 O 7 , that is an intermediate formed by the dehydrogenation of isocitric acid in fat and carbohydrate metabolism.
- pacinian corpuscle — (sometimes lowercase) a microscopic, onionlike body consisting of layers of connective tissue wrapped around a nerve ending, located in the deep layers of skin, tendons, etc., and functioning as a sensory receptor of pressure and vibration.
- parallactic motion — the apparent motion of stars due to the earth's orbital motion.
- parallel computing — parallel processing
- parallel reduction — A form of applicative order reduction in which all redexes in an expression are reduced simultaneously. Variants include parallel outermost reduction and lenient reduction. See normal order reduction.
- parallel resonance — the resonance that results when circuit elements are connected with their inductance and capacitance in parallel, so that the impedance of the combination rises to a maximum at the resonant frequency
- pathologic anatomy — the branch of pathology dealing with the morphologic changes in tissues.
- pectoral sandpiper — an American sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, the male of which, when courting, inflates its chest conspicuously.
- people trafficking — the practice of bringing immigrants into a country illegally
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- perlocutionary act — the action of affecting someone by uttering certain words
- personal allowance — the amount of money you are allowed to earn each year without paying tax
- personal insurance — insurance on personal risk, such as car insurance, health insurance or loss of earnings insurance
- pescadores-islands — (used with a plural verb) Penghu.
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.
- phantasmagorically — having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
- philharmonic pitch — a standard of pitch in which A above middle C is established at 440 vibrations per second.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- plane of incidence — a plane determined by a given ray, incident on a surface, and the normal at the point where the incident ray strikes the surface.
- platinocyanic acid — the hypothetical acid containing platinum and the cyano group, H 2 Pt(CN) 4 .
- play cat and mouse — Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- policeman's helmet — a Himalayan balsaminaceous plant, Impatiens glandulifera, with large purplish-pink flowers, introduced into Britain
- political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
- political question — a question regarded by the courts as being a matter to be determined by another department of government rather than of law and therefore one with which they will not deal, as the recognition of a foreign state.
- politically-minded — (of a person or group of people) interested in the way power is achieved and used in a country or society (through government, policy-making, etc)
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- population balance — A population balance is a model showing particle sizes during a grinding process, which is used when designing a process.
- population control — a policy of attempting to limit the growth in numbers of a population, esp in poor or densely populated parts of the world, by programmes of contraception or sterilization
- portal circulation — blood flow in a portal system.
- 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.
- 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.
- principal diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- 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.