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18-letter words containing o, n, e, s, t, p

  • prestidigitization — /pres`t*-di"j*-ti:-zay"sh*n/ 1. A term coined by Daniel Klein <[email protected]> for the act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
  • 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.
  • priority inversion — (parallel)   The state of a concurrent system where a high priority task is waiting for a low priority task which is waiting for a medium priority task. The system may become unstable and crash under these circumstances. In an operating system that uses multiple tasks, each task (or context) may be given a priority. These priorities help the scheduler decide which task to run next. Consider tasks, L, M, and H, with priorities Low, Medium, and High. M is running and H is blocked waiting for some resource that is held by L. So long as any task with a priority higher than L is runable, it will prevent task L, and thus task H, from running. Priority inversion is generally considered either as a high-level design failure or an implementation issue to be taken into account depending on who is talking. Most operating systems have methods in place to prevent or take inversion into account. Priority inheritance is one method. The most public instance of priority inversion is the repeated 'fail-safe' rebooting of the Mars Pathfinder. base station ('Sagan Memorial Station').
  • prison authorities — the people in charge of running a prison
  • process identifier — (operating system)   (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
  • processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
  • procrustean string — (programming)   A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
  • prometheus unbound — a drama in verse (1820) by Shelley.
  • property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
  • protease inhibitor — a drug that inhibits the action of protease, especially any of a class of antiviral drugs that prevent the cleavage and replication of HIV proteins.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
  • pseudoappendicitis — inflammation of the vermiform appendix.
  • 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
  • ptomaine poisoning — (erroneously) food poisoning thought to be caused by ptomaine.
  • pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
  • puss in the corner — a parlor game for children in which one player in the middle of a room tries to occupy any of the positions along the walls that become vacant as other players dash across to exchange places at a signal.
  • put one's shirt on — to bet all one has on (a horse, etc)
  • put the mockers on — stop, thwart
  • qattara depression — a desert basin in the Libyan Desert, in NW Egypt: lowest point is 435 feet (133 meters) below sea level. 6950 sq. mi. (18,000 sq. km).
  • radiation exposure — exposure to radiant energy or to the particles emitted in the transfer of radiant energy, esp the particles and gamma rays emitted in nuclear decay; exposure to radioactive substances
  • radiation pressure — the pressure exerted on a surface by electromagnetic radiation or by sound waves.
  • raman spectroscopy — a form of spectroscopy which uses the Raman effect for studying molecules
  • recess appointment — a person appointed to an office by the President of the United States without approval from the Senate because the Senate is in recess
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
  • reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
  • reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
  • resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
  • retirement pension — income: no longer at work
  • scissors-and-paste — designating or of a piece of writing that has been assembled from a variety of sources rather than by original research, often in a hasty or uninspired way
  • seasonal promotion — Seasonal promotions are items marketed to customers at the appropriate time of year, such as coats in the winter and bathing suits in the summer.
  • segmental phonemes — phonemes consisting of sound segments; hence, the vowel, consonant, and semivowel sounds of a language
  • self-contemplation — the act or process of thinking about oneself or one's values, beliefs, behavior, etc.
  • self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
  • semiprecious stone — See at semiprecious.
  • separation anxiety — the normal fear and apprehension expressed by infants when removed from their mothers or approached by strangers.
  • shape-note singing — a traditional style of a capella singing using shape-note notation.
  • shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
  • shipping documents — documents relating to the sending of a shipment of goods, for example containing details of contents, weight, value etc.
  • shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
  • shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
  • silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
  • simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
  • sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
  • slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
  • slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
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