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19-letter words containing p, a, t

  • application testing — system testing
  • applied linguistics — linguistic theory as applied to such fields as lexicography, psychology, the teaching of reading, the creation of orthographies, and especially language teaching.
  • appointment viewing — the practice of setting time aside to watch particular television programmes
  • appointments bureau — an office responsible for filling appointments
  • appraisal interview — an interview by the manager of an employee who is being appraised
  • armed response unit — (in Britain) a unit of police officers who are trained to use firearms in situations where unarmed police officers would be in danger
  • army of the potomac — Union forces, trained and organized by Gen. George B. McClellan, that guarded Washington, D.C., against a Confederate invasion across the Potomac and fought battles in the eastern sector during the Civil War.
  • as sick as a parrot — If you say that you feel as sick as a parrot, you feel very disappointed about something.
  • as things/people go — You use expressions like as things go or as children go when you are describing one person or thing and comparing them with others of the same kind.
  • assistant principal — a person who assists a principal in their work
  • assistant professor — An assistant professor is a college teacher who ranks above an instructor but below an associate professor.
  • associate professor — An associate professor is a college teacher who ranks above an assistant professor but below a professor.
  • at one's fingertips — readily available and within one's mental grasp
  • atmospheric braking — a technique of reentry in which the vehicle is maneuvered in the upper atmosphere so as to lose velocity by utilizing drag without overheating.
  • attempt the life of — to try to kill
  • audio response unit — a device that enables a computer to give a spoken response by generating sounds similar to human speech.
  • 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.
  • balance of payments — A country's balance of payments is the difference, over a period of time, between the payments it makes to other countries for imports and the payments it receives from other countries for exports.
  • 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
  • balloon angioplasty — angioplasty in which a balloon catheter is moved to a blocked area of a blood vessel where the balloon is inflated to expand or force open the vessel
  • banff national park — a national reserve, 2585 sq. mi. (6695 sq. km), in the Rocky Mountains, in SW Alberta, Canada.
  • banker's acceptance — a draft or bill of exchange drawn on a bank and accepted by it
  • 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
  • beta-naphthyl group — See under naphthyl.
  • 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.
  • black carpenter ant — a large, black ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, that lives in damp wood in nature or in houses, where it can cause considerable damage by boring or tunneling.
  • black carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
  • blackstrap molasses — the molasses remaining after the maximum quantity of sugar has been extracted from the raw material
  • blast from the past — You can use a blast from the past as a light-hearted way of referring to something such as an old song or fashion that you hear or notice again, and which reminds you of an earlier time.
  • breach of the peace — A breach of the peace is noisy or violent behaviour in a public place which is illegal because it disturbs other people.
  • 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
  • by one's bootstraps — by one's own efforts; unaided
  • calculate a premium — If you calculate a premium, you decide how much a policyholder has to pay for insurance cover.
  • camouflage passport — a passport from a non-existent country intended to conceal the bearer's true nationality (from hijackers, kidnappers, etc)
  • cannot help oneself — to be the victim of circumstances, a habit, etc.
  • canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
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