16-letter words containing p, a, l, e
- parallelepipedon — a prism with six faces, all parallelograms.
- paraprofessional — a person trained to assist a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or other professional, but not licensed to practice in the profession.
- paratuberculosis — Johne's disease.
- parkerhouse roll — a yeast roll shaped by folding over a flat, round piece of buttered dough
- parliament hinge — a butt hinge the knuckle of which protrudes from the door so that the door when fully opened stands away from the wall.
- parole violation — an illegal act or offence that breaches the conditions of a prisoner's parole
- 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.
- partial pressure — the pressure that a gas in a mixture of gases would exert if it occupied the same volume as the mixture at the same temperature.
- particle physics — the branch of physics that deals with the properties and behavior of elementary particles.
- 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.
- pass-band filter — band-pass filter
- pastoral epistle — any one of three New Testament books, I or II Timothy or Titus, that stress pastoral and ecclesiastical concerns.
- pathetic fallacy — the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings, as in the smiling skies; the angry sea.
- pays de la loire — a region of W France, on the Bay of Biscay: generally low-lying, drained by the River Loire and its tributaries; agricultural
- pearls of wisdom — good advice, wise words
- pearly razorfish — See under razorfish.
- 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
- pelagian islands — a group of Italian islands (Lampedusa, Linosa, and Lampione) in the Mediterranean, between Tunisia and Malta. Pop: 6066 (2004 est). Area: about 27 sq km (11 sq miles)
- pelagic division — the biogeographic realm or zone that comprises the open seas and oceans, including water of all depths.
- pelican crossing — place to cross road
- pencil and paper — An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based technology include improved "write-once" update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit coloured pigment. All these devices require an operator skilled at so-called "handwriting" technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
- pencil sharpener — tool for sharpening pencils to a point
- peninsular state — Florida (used as a nickname).
- 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.
- perchloromethane — carbon tetrachloride.
- peregrine falcon — a globally distributed falcon, Falco peregrinus, much used in falconry because of its swift flight: several subspecies are endangered.
- perez de cuellar — Javier [hah-vyer] /hɑˈvyɛr/ (Show IPA), born 1920, Peruvian diplomat: secretary-general of the United Nations 1982–91; prime minister of Peru 2000–2001.
- perforated ulcer — an ulcer that bursts through the stomach wall and leaks food and gastric juices into the abdominal cavity
- periodic decimal — repeating decimal.
- permaculturalist — a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem.
- permafrost table — the variable surface constituting the upper limit of permafrost. Compare frostline (def 2).
- perpendicularity — vertical; straight up and down; upright.
- 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.
- personal details — details about a person such as their name and address
- personal effects — belongings
- personal hygiene — bodily cleanliness
- 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 pension — a private pension scheme in which an individual contributes part of his or her salary to a financial institution, which invests it so that a lump sum is available on retirement; this is then used to purchase an annuity
- personal pronoun — any one of the pronouns used to refer to the speaker, or to one or more to or about whom or which he or she is speaking, as, in English, I, we, you, he, she, it, they.
- personal shopper — a person, often a store employee, whose job is to assist shoppers in selecting clothing or other merchandise.
- 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.