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18-letter words containing p, a, r, l

  • postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
  • potassium chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
  • potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
  • potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
  • potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
  • pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
  • prairie crab apple — a tree, Malus ioensis, of the rose family, native to the central U.S., having downy branchlets, white or rose-tinted flowers, and round, waxy, greenish fruit.
  • preantepenultimate — third from the end.
  • precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
  • precipitable water — the total water vapor contained in a unit vertical column of the atmosphere.
  • predicate calculus — predicate logic
  • preparatory school — a private or parochial secondary school, especially one boarding its students and providing a college-preparatory education.
  • prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
  • prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
  • presenile dementia — a form of dementia, of unknown cause, starting before a person is old
  • present participle — Grammar. a participle form, in English having the suffix -ing, denoting repetition or duration of an activity or event: used as an adjective, as in the growing weeds, and in forming progressive verb forms, as in The weeds are growing.
  • presentation layer — (networking)   The second highest layer (layer 6) in the OSI seven layer model. Performs functions such as text compression, code or format conversion to try to smooth out differences between hosts. Allows incompatible processes in the application layer to communicate via the session layer. Documents: ITU Rec. X.226 (ISO 8823), ITU Rec. X.216 (ISO 8822).
  • presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
  • pressure altimeter — an aneroid barometer adapted for measuring altitude by converting the indicated atmospheric pressure to altitude according to a standard relationship.
  • 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.
  • primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
  • principal argument — the radian measure of the argument between −π and π of a complex number. Compare argument (def 8c).
  • principal diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
  • principal meridian — a meridian line accurately laid out to serve as the reference meridian in land survey
  • prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
  • probability theory — the theory of analyzing and making statements concerning the probability of the occurrence of uncertain events. Compare probability (def 4).
  • programme planning — the act of creating plans or schedules, esp in relation to your occupation
  • programming skills — the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a computer
  • proportional limit — elastic limit.
  • proprietary colony — any of certain colonies, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, that were granted to an individual or group by the British crown and that were granted full rights of self-government.
  • protocol data unit — (PDU) A packet of data passed across a network. The term implies a specific layer of the OSI seven layer model and a specific protocol.
  • provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
  • provascular tissue — procambium.
  • provincial council — (formerly) a council administering any of the New Zealand provinces
  • przewalski's horse — a wild horse, Equus caballus przevalskii, chiefly of Mongolia and Sinkiang, characterized by light yellow coloring and a stiff, upright black mane with no forelock: the only remaining breed of wild horse, it is now endangered and chiefly maintained in zoos.
  • psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
  • psychopharmacology — the branch of pharmacology dealing with the psychological effects of drugs.
  • public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
  • pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
  • pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
  • pulp canal therapy — endodontics.
  • pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
  • pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
  • quarter-wave plate — a crystal thin enough to cause a phase difference of 90° between the ordinary and extraordinary rays of polarized light, thereby converting circularly polarized light into plane polarized light.
  • quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc
  • radical empiricism — (in the philosophy of William James) the doctrine that the only proper subject matter of philosophy is that which can be defined in terms of experience, and that relations are a part of experience.
  • radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
  • rail rapid transit — a system of rail transit within an urban area that has exclusive right of way either below, above, or on the ground and so is capable of relatively high operating speed. Abbreviation: RRT.
  • rational operation — any of the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
  • real-time computer — a computer that can process data or information almost immediately
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