16-letter words containing o, p, t, e
- palmtop computer — a computer that has a small screen and compressed keyboard and is small enough to be held in the hand, often used as a personal organizer
- pantothenic acid — a hydroxy acid, C 9 H 1 7 O 5 N, found in plant and animal tissues, rice, bran, etc., that is part of the B complex of vitamins and is essential for cell growth.
- para-nitrophenol — any compound derived from phenol by the replacement of one or more of its ring hydrogen atoms by the nitro group.
- parallel fortran — (language) (Pfortran) Extensions to Fortran by Ridgway Scott <[email protected]> of Houston University. Pfortran provides a shared memory SIMD model on message passing computers. It was under development in 1994.
- paratuberculosis — Johne's disease.
- parity operation — the mathematical operation of reversing the directions of all three space coordinates. Symbol: P.
- parole violation — an illegal act or offence that breaches the conditions of a prisoner's parole
- parrot's-feather — a South American water milfoil, Myriophyllum aquaticum, having hairlike pinnate leaves, widely cultivated as an aquarium plant.
- parser generator — A program which takes a formal description of a grammar (e.g. in BNF) and outputs source code for a parser which will recognise valid strings obeying that grammar and perform associated actions. Unix's yacc is a well known example.
- partial ordering — a relation defined on a set, having the properties that each element is in relation to itself, the relation is transitive, and if two elements are in relation to each other, the two elements are equal.
- parts of lindsey — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
- pascal's theorem — the theorem that the lines joining adjacent vertices of a hexagon intersect the same straight line if alternate vertices lie on two intersecting straight lines.
- passage to india — a novel (1924) by E. M. Forster.
- past progressive — a verb form consisting of an auxiliary be in the past tense followed by a present participle and used especially to indicate that an action or event was incomplete or in progress at a point of reference in the past, as was sleeping in I was sleeping when the phone rang.
- pastoral epistle — any one of three New Testament books, I or II Timothy or Titus, that stress pastoral and ecclesiastical concerns.
- patched-together — makeshift; roughly made from disparate elements
- paterson's curse — a purple-flowered noxious plant, Echium plantagineum, a close relative of viper's bugloss, naturalized in Australia and NZ where its harmfulness to livestock has prompted attempts to limit its spread
- peach tree borer — the larva of any of several clearwing moths, as Sanninoidea exitiosa, that bore into the wood of the peach and other drupaceous trees.
- peano arithmetic — (mathematics) Giuseppe Peano's system for representing natural numbers inductively using only two symbols, "0" (zero) and "S" (successor). This system could be expressed as a recursive data type with the following Haskell definition: data Peano = Zero | Succ Peano The number three, usually written "SSS0", would be Succ (Succ (Succ Zero)). Addition of Peano numbers can be expressed as a simple syntactic transformation: plus Zero n = n plus (Succ m) n = Succ (plus m n) (1995-03-28)
- peasants' revolt — the first great popular rebellion in English history (1381), caused by the imposition of an unpopular poll tax: it lasted less than a month and failed as a social revolution
- pectoralis major — the larger of the two large chest muscles that assist in movements of the shoulder and upper arm
- pectoralis minor — the smaller of the two large chest muscles that assist in movements of the shoulder and upper arm
- pension benefits — the benefits that are paid to a person in accordance with his pension scheme
- pension mortgage — an arrangement whereby a person takes out a mortgage and pays the capital repayment instalments into a pension fund and the interest to the mortgagee. The loan is repaid out of the tax-free lump sum proceeds of the pension plan on the borrower's retirement
- pentatonic scale — a scale having five tones to an octave, as one having intervals that correspond to the five black keys of a piano octave.
- pentothal sodium — thiopental sodium
- people's charter — the principles or movement of a party of political reformers, chiefly workingmen, in England from 1838 to 1848: so called from the document (People's Charter or National Charter) that contained a statement of their principles and demands.
- percentage point — difference: one per cent
- perchloromethane — carbon tetrachloride.
- perforated ulcer — an ulcer that bursts through the stomach wall and leaks food and gastric juices into the abdominal cavity
- performance test — a test requiring little or no use of language, the test materials being designed to elicit manual or behavioral responses rather than verbal ones.
- period furniture — furniture that was made during a particular period in time
- periodic tenancy — the letting of a dwelling for a repeated short term, as by the week, month, or quarter, with no end date
- permafrost table — the variable surface constituting the upper limit of permafrost. Compare frostline (def 2).
- perpetual motion — the motion of a theoretical mechanism that, without any losses due to friction or other forms of dissipation of energy, would continue to operate indefinitely at the same rate without any external energy being applied to it.
- person-to-person — (of a long-distance telephone call) chargeable only upon speaking with a specified person at the number called: a person-to-person call to her brother in California. Compare station-to-station.
- personal details — details about a person such as their name and address
- personal effects — belongings
- personal liberty — the liberty of an individual to do his or her will freely except for those restraints imposed by law to safeguard the physical, moral, political, and economic welfare of others.
- personal stylist — a person employed by a rich or famous client to offer advice on clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of personal appearance
- personal trainer — a person who works one-on-one with a client to plan or implement an exercise or fitness regimen.
- personal tuition — private tuition
- personality cult — deliberately cultivated adulation of a person, esp a political leader
- personality test — an instrument, as a questionnaire or series of standardized tasks, used to measure personality characteristics or to discover personality disorders.
- personality type — a cluster of personality traits commonly occurring together
- peter pan collar — a close-fitting flat or rolled collar with rounded ends that meet in front of a high, round neckline.
- petrified forest — a national park in E Arizona, containing petrified coniferous trees about 170 000 000 years old
- petrol rationing — a scheme rationing the amount of petrol that an individual is allowed to purchase
- phagocytic index — the average number of bacteria ingested per phagocyte in an incubated mixture of bacteria, phagocytes, and blood serum: used in determining the opsonic index.
- pharmacogenetics — the branch of pharmacology that examines the relation of genetic factors to variations in response to drugs.