14-letter words containing p, a, e, o
- asthenospermic — (medicine) Characterised by or pertaining to asthenospermia, hence infertile.
- asthenospheric — relating to the asthenosphere
- astigmatoscope — an instrument for determining the presence and severity of astigmatism.
- astrocompasses — Plural form of astrocompass.
- at knife-point — under threat of being stabbed
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- atomic-powered — powered by atomic energy
- attention span — the period of time during which someone's attention is held by something in particular
- audio response — a computer response that is audible rather than textual or graphical
- auspiciousness — The state or quality of being auspicious or successful.
- autobiographer — a person who writes the story of his or her own life
- autopilot code — (jargon, humour) Code that was written by a programmer on "auto-pilot" who wasn't really thinking about what they were doing.
- autoresponders — Plural form of autoresponder.
- autotetraploid — an individual or strain whose chromosome complement consists of four copies of a single genome due to doubling of an ancestral chromosome complement
- avoidance play — a play by the declarer designed to prevent a particular opponent from taking the lead.
- aztec two-step — Montezuma's revenge
- bachelor party — A bachelor party is a party for a man who is getting married very soon, to which only men are invited.
- bacteriophages — Plural form of bacteriophage.
- ballast pocket — a depression that is formed beneath the ballast layer by penetration of ballast particles into the subgrade and that tends to collect moisture.
- balsam of peru — an aromatic balsam that is obtained from the tropical South American leguminous tree Myroxylon pereirae and is similar to balsam of Tolu
- baltimore chop — a batted ball that takes a high bounce upon hitting the ground on or immediately in front of home plate, often enabling the batter to reach first base safely.
- banana problem — (programming, humour) From the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell "banana", but I don't know when to stop". Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare fencepost error). One may say "there is a banana problem" of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also creeping elegance, creeping featuritis).
- bancroft prize — one of a group of annual awards for literary achievement in American history and biography: administered by Columbia University.
- barbados pride — Also called bead tree. a tropical African and Asian tree, Adenanthera pavonina, of the legume family, having feathery foliage and bearing red seeds that are used in beadwork.
- bare ownership — ownership of a piece of property without the right to use and derive profit from that property
- barometrograph — barograph.
- base component — the system of rules in a transformational grammar that specify the deep structure of the language
- bass saxophone — a large saxophone of low range, usually supported on a stand while being played.
- beauty parlour — A beauty parlour is a place where women can go to have beauty treatments, for example to have their hair, nails or make-up done.
- beggar's opera — a ballad opera (1728) with text by John Gay and music arranged by John Pepusch.
- benday process — a process for adding tone or shading, as in reproducing drawings, by the overlay on the plate of patterns, as of dots
- benzodiazepine — any of a group of chemical compounds that are used as minor tranquillizers, such as diazepam (Valium) and chlordiazepoxide (Librium)
- beta-endorphin — a potent endorphin released by the anterior pituitary gland in response to pain, trauma, exercise, or other forms of stress.
- beyond compare — If you describe something as beyond compare, you mean that it is extremely good or extremely great.
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blood platelet — any of the minute, disklike, colorless elements of the blood that are essential for normal clotting
- blotting paper — Blotting paper is thick soft paper that you use for soaking up and drying ink on a piece of paper.
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- bone porcelain — bone china.
- bow and scrape — to behave in an excessively deferential or obsequious way
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- breaking point — If something or someone has reached breaking point, they have so many problems or difficulties that they can no longer cope with them, and may soon collapse or be unable to continue.
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- brood parasite — a young bird hatched and reared by birds of a different species as a result of brood parasitism.
- bubble company — a company whose shares are highly valued and then plummet
- bubonic plague — Bubonic plague is a serious infectious disease spread by rats. It killed many people during the Middle Ages.
- bug-compatible — Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures in other programs or (especially) previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an option character in 1.0."
- by appointment — If something can be done by appointment, people can arrange in advance to do it at a particular time.
- cabbage looper — the larva of a noctuid moth, Trichoplusia ni, common throughout the U.S. and Canada, that feeds on a wide variety of vegetable crops, especially cabbage and lettuce.