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19-letter words containing p, a, r, i

  • audio response unit — a device that enables a computer to give a spoken response by generating sounds similar to human speech.
  • auricular appendage — auricle (def 1b).
  • auricular-appendage — Anatomy. the projecting outer portion of the ear; pinna. Also called auricular appendage. an ear-shaped appendage projecting from each atrium of the heart. (loosely) the atrium.
  • australian fan palm — a fan palm, Livistona australis, of Australia, having a slender, reddish-brown trunk, spiny leafstalks, and round fruit.
  • austro-prussian war — the war (1866) in which Prussia, Italy, and some minor German states opposed Austria, Saxony, Hanover, and the states of southern Germany.
  • autoerotic asphyxia — asphyxia caused by intentionally strangling oneself while masturbating in order to intensify the orgasm through reduced oxygen flow to the brain.
  • autotransplantation — autograft.
  • backward compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophyll — a pale blue-gray form of chlorophyll that is unique to the photosynthetic but anaerobic purple bacteria.
  • ballistocardiograph — an instrument that records the slight recoil of the body, while on a special bed, caused by the contractions of the heart: used to measure cardiac pumping power and the elasticity of the aorta
  • banff national park — a national reserve, 2585 sq. mi. (6695 sq. km), in the Rocky Mountains, in SW Alberta, Canada.
  • bankruptcy petition — an official request for protection under bankruptcy laws, which initiates bankruptcy proceedings
  • bargaining position — the position of a person, group, or organization in a negotiation, with respect to their ability to achieve a deal which is favourable to themselves
  • barometric pressure — atmospheric pressure as indicated by a barometer
  • be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
  • beauty preparations — the cosmetics, creams etc used to improve someone's beauty
  • benefit performance — a theatrical or musical performance in aid of charity
  • bill of particulars — an itemized statement of claims or counterclaims provided to the opposing party of a lawsuit
  • binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
  • binomial experiment — an experiment consisting of a fixed number of independent trials each with two possible outcomes, success and failure, and the same probability of success. The probability of a given number of successes is described by a binominal distribution
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • blind carbon (copy) — a carbon copy of a letter sent to someone other than the addressee, with no indication on the original letter that such a copy has been sent
  • breathing apparatus — an apparatus, usually consisting of tanks of air or oxygen and a mouthpiece, that enables the wearer to breath in difficult conditions such as a smoke-filled building
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • calculate a premium — If you calculate a premium, you decide how much a policyholder has to pay for insurance cover.
  • california fan palm — a tall fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, of California, having a shaggy skirt of withered leaves near the top of the trunk.
  • campernelle jonquil — a narcissus, Narcissus odorus, of the amaryllis family, having clusters of two to four fragrant yellow flowers.
  • canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
  • cape york peninsula — large peninsula in NE Australia, part of Queensland, between the Gulf of Carpentaria & the Coral Sea
  • capital expenditure — expenditure on acquisitions of or improvements to fixed assets
  • captain abstraction — The champion of the principles of abstraction and modularity, who protects unwary students on MIT's course 6.001 from the nefarious designs of Sergeant Spaghetticode and his vile concrete programming practices. See also spaghetti code.
  • captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
  • captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
  • carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
  • caterpillar tractor — a tractor powered by a Caterpillar track
  • cathodic protection — a technique for protecting metal structures, such as steel ships and pipelines, from electrolytic corrosion by making the structure the cathode in a cell, either by applying an electromotive force directly or by putting it into contact with a more electropositive metal
  • cerebral hemisphere — either half of the cerebrum
  • cerebrospinal fluid — the clear colourless fluid in the spaces inside and around the spinal cord and brain
  • chain-reacting pile — nuclear reactor
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • champigny-sur-marne — a suburb of Paris, on the River Marne. Pop: 75 556 (2006)
  • chemical processing — Chemical processing is a way of making changes to chemical compounds.
  • chemolithoautotroph — (biology) A chemoautotroph or lithoautotroph.
  • chinese finger trap — a child's toy, consisting of a small cylinder of woven straw or paper into which the forefingers are placed, one in each end: the harder one pulls, the more securely the fingers are held.
  • chlorobromide paper — a relatively fast printing paper coated with an emulsion of silver chloride and silver bromide.
  • chloroplatinic acid — a red-brown, crystalline, water-soluble solid, H 2 PtCl 6 ⋅6H 2 O, used chiefly in platinizing glass, metals, and ceramic ware.
  • christmas pantomime — pantomime (def 5).
  • chromatographically — With regard to, or by by using chromatography.
  • cinematographically — a motion-picture projector.
  • circulating capital — the non-permanent raw materials and operating expenses that are used up to produce other goods or services
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