16-letter words containing p, a, s, t, e, r
- oesophagogastric — (anatomy) Of or pertaining to the oesophagus and the stomach.
- on the scrapheap — (of people or things) having outlived their usefulness
- one-party system — a political system in which only one party is allowed
- open parenthesis — left parenthesis
- operating system — (operating system) (OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running. The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship. Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around the machines on which it runs. Example operating systems include 386BSD, AIX, AOS, Amoeba, Angel, Artemis microkernel, BeOS, Brazil, COS, CP/M, CTSS, Chorus, DACNOS, DOSEXEC 2, GCOS, GEORGE 3, GEOS, ITS, KAOS, Linux, LynxOS, MPV, MS-DOS, MVS, Mach, Macintosh operating system, Microsoft Windows, MINIX, Multics, Multipop-68, Novell NetWare, OS-9, OS/2, Pick, Plan 9, QNX, RISC OS, STING, System V, System/360, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, TRUSIX, TWENEX, TYMCOM-X, Thoth, Unix, VM/CMS, VMS, VRTX, VSTa, VxWorks, WAITS.
- operating-system — the collection of software that directs a computer's operations, controlling and scheduling the execution of other programs, and managing storage, input/output, and communication resources. Abbreviation: OS.
- ophthalmoparesis — (medicine) A partial or complete paralysis of the extraocular muscles which are responsible for eye movements.
- optical tweezers — a laser device used to study, manipulate, or trap a microscopic object, as a microorganism or cell, with nanometer precision.
- organophosphates — Plural form of organophosphate.
- orthosympathetic — Of or pertaining to the sympathetic component of the autonomic nervous system.
- over-speculation — the contemplation or consideration of some subject: to engage in speculation on humanity's ultimate destiny.
- overcompensating — Present participle of overcompensate.
- overcompensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- overcompensatory — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- pacific sturgeon — a dark gray sturgeon, Acipenser transmontanus, inhabiting marine and fresh waters along the northwestern coast of North America, valued as a food and sport fish.
- paediatric nurse — a nurse who specializes in the care of children
- paint-by-numbers — formulaic; showing no original thought or creativity
- pairs tournament — an event in a sport such as tennis or darts open to pairs of competitors
- palmerston north — a city in New Zealand, in the S North Island on the Manawatu River. Pop: 78 100 (2004 est)
- paratuberculosis — Johne's disease.
- parents' evening — an occasion when the parents of children at a school and their teachers come together (outside normal school hours, in the evening) in order to discuss the progress or work of the children
- parrot's-feather — a South American water milfoil, Myriophyllum aquaticum, having hairlike pinnate leaves, widely cultivated as an aquarium plant.
- parser generator — A program which takes a formal description of a grammar (e.g. in BNF) and outputs source code for a parser which will recognise valid strings obeying that grammar and perform associated actions. Unix's yacc is a well known example.
- 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
- passive transfer — Immunology. injection of lymphocytes or antibody from an immune or sensitized donor to a nonimmune host in order to impart immunity or test for allergic reactions.
- past progressive — a verb form consisting of an auxiliary be in the past tense followed by a present participle and used especially to indicate that an action or event was incomplete or in progress at a point of reference in the past, as was sleeping in I was sleeping when the phone rang.
- pastoral epistle — any one of three New Testament books, I or II Timothy or Titus, that stress pastoral and ecclesiastical concerns.
- paterson's curse — a purple-flowered noxious plant, Echium plantagineum, a close relative of viper's bugloss, naturalized in Australia and NZ where its harmfulness to livestock has prompted attempts to limit its spread
- 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
- peninsular state — Florida (used as a nickname).
- pension mortgage — an arrangement whereby a person takes out a mortgage and pays the capital repayment instalments into a pension fund and the interest to the mortgagee. The loan is repaid out of the tax-free lump sum proceeds of the pension plan on the borrower's retirement
- 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.
- performance test — a test requiring little or no use of language, the test materials being designed to elicit manual or behavioral responses rather than verbal ones.
- 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).
- personal details — details about a person such as their name and address
- personal effects — belongings
- 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 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.
- personality type — a cluster of personality traits commonly occurring together