12-letter words containing p, a, s, o
- petaliferous — bearing or having petals.
- petrobrusian — a member of a 12th-century sect in S France that rejected the Mass, infant baptism, prayers for the dead, sacerdotalism, the veneration of the cross, and the building of churches.
- petrodollars — Petrodollars are a unit of money used to calculate how much a country has earned by exporting petroleum or natural gas.
- petrozavodsk — a city in NW Russia, capital of the Karelian Autonomous Republic, on Lake Onega: developed around ironworks established by Peter the Great in 1703; university (1940). Pop: 265 000 (2005 est)
- phagocytoses — phagocytize.
- phagocytosis — Physiology. the ingestion of a smaller cell or cell fragment, a microorganism, or foreign particles by means of the local infolding of a cell's membrane and the protrusion of its cytoplasm around the fold until the material has been surrounded and engulfed by closure of the membrane and formation of a vacuole: characteristic of amebas and some types of white blood cells.
- phalaenopsis — any of various epiphytic orchids of the genus Phalaenopsis, native to tropical Asia, having clusters of showy, variously colored flowers.
- phonasthenia — difficult or abnormal voice production; vocal weakness.
- phonotactics — the patterns in which the phonemes of a language may combine to form sequences.
- phosphamidon — a systemic and contact insecticide, C 1 0 H 1 9 ClNO 5 P, used against beetles, aphids, mites, and other crop pests.
- phosphatidic — of or relating to a phosphatide
- phosphatidyl — an atom or group of atoms containing one or more unpaired electrons derived from a phosphatide
- phosphaturia — the presence of an excessive quantity of phosphates in the urine.
- photo spread — a picture spread. See under spread (def 33).
- photo-stated — a camera for making facsimile copies of documents, drawings, etc., in the form of paper negatives on which the positions of lines, objects, etc., in the originals are maintained.
- photoanalyst — a person who analyzes and interprets photographs, especially a military specialist in aerial or satellite photography.
- photoelastic — displaying photoelasticity; of or relating to photoelasticity
- photorealism — a style of painting flourishing in the 1970s, especially in the U.S., England, and France, and depicting commonplace scenes or ordinary people, with a meticulously detailed realism, flat images, and barely discernible brushwork that suggests and often is based on or incorporates an actual photograph.
- phragmoplast — the cytoplasmic structure that forms at the equator of the spindle after the chromosomes have divided during the anaphase of plant mitosis, and that initiates cell division.
- phrasemonger — phrasemaker (def 2).
- phraseograph — a phrase for which there is a phraseogram.
- physiography — the science of physical geography.
- physogastric — pertaining to the swollen, membranous abdomen of certain insects, especially termite and ant queens.
- phytophagous — herbivorous.
- piano lesson — music class in playing the piano
- picornavirus — any of a group of small, RNA-containing viruses of the family Picornaviridae, infectious to humans and other animals, and including the poliovirus and the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.
- pictorialism — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- pictorialist — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- piece of ass — a separate or limited portion or quantity of something: a piece of land; a piece of chocolate.
- pilot signal — a signal, as a flag or light, used to request a pilot.
- pirate coast — an independent federation in E Arabia, formed in 1971, now comprising seven emirates on the S coast (formerly, Pirate Coast or Trucial Coast) of the Persian Gulf, formerly under British protection: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah (joined 1972), and Fujairah. About 32,300 sq. mi. (83,657 sq. km). Capital: Abu Dhabi. Abbreviation: U.A.E.
- plain-spoken — candid; frank; blunt.
- plainclothes — Plainclothes police officers wear ordinary clothes instead of a police uniform.
- plasma torch — an electrical device for converting a gas into a plasma, used for melting metal
- plasmosomata — a kind of nucleoli
- plasterboard — a material used for insulating or covering walls, or as a lath, consisting of paper-covered sheets of gypsum and felt.
- plastic bomb — a bomb made of plastic explosive.
- plastic flow — deformation of a material that remains rigid under stresses of less than a certain intensity but that behaves under severer stresses approximately as a Newtonian fluid.
- plastic foam — expanded plastic.
- plastination — a technique for embalming bodies by impregnating whole organs with silicon polymers
- plastocyanin — a blue protein found in green plants and in some bacteria
- platanaceous — relating to the family Platanaceae
- play clothes — clothes that are suitable for playing in
- pleiochasium — a flowering system in which several buds come out at the same time
- plumbaginous — containing graphite.
- plumulaceous — having the texture of down.
- pneumatocyst — the cavity of a pneumatophore.
- poetastering — the profession of being a poetaster
- poeticalness — the characteristic of being poetical
- pogson ratio — the brightness ratio of two celestial objects that differ by one magnitude. On the Pogson scale a difference of 5 magnitudes is defined as a difference of 100 in the intensities of two stars; therefore a difference of 1 magnitude is equal to the fifth root of 100, i.e. 2.512