19-letter words containing p, c, l, i
- physically impaired — with reduced or weakened physical capacity
- pileated woodpecker — a large, black-and-white American woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus, having a prominent red crest.
- pilgrimage of grace — a rebellion in 1536 in N England against the Reformation and Henry VIII's government
- pillars of hercules — the two promontories at the E end of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Jebel Musa on the African side; according to legend, formed by Hercules
- pinwheel escapement — a clock escapement in which two pallets, usually of unequal length, alternately engage and release pins set on the escape wheel perpendicular to its plane of rotation.
- plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- point of inflection — inflection point.
- police headquarters — building where police are stationed
- police intervention — the physical involvement of police officers in an incident, esp where officers use force to control public disorder, such as a riot
- political geography — the branch of human geography that deals with the relationship between political processes and spatial structures (regions, territories, etc)
- political scientist — A political scientist is someone who studies, writes, or lectures about political science.
- political-scientist — a social science dealing with political institutions and with the principles and conduct of government.
- politically correct — marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving especially ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or ecology: The actor’s comment about unattractive women was not politically correct. The CEO feels that people who care about being politically correct are overly sensitive. Abbreviations: PC, P.C.
- polycarboxylic acid — a type of carboxylic acid containing two or more carboxyl groups
- polyclonal antibody — a mixture of antibodies of different specificities, as in the serum of a person immunized to various antigens.
- polyphonic ringtone — (in mobile phones) a ringtone in which more than one musical note is played at the same time
- polyphosphoric acid — any one of a series of oxyacids of phosphorus with the general formula Hn+2PnO3n+1. The first member is pyrophosphoric acid (n = 2) and the series includes the highly polymeric metaphosphoric acid. The higher acids exist in an equilibrium mixture
- population genetics — the branch of genetics concerned with the hereditary makeup of populations.
- port jackson willow — an Australian acacia tree, Acacia cyanophylla, introduced in the 19th century into South Africa, where it is now regarded as a pest
- post office problem — (algorithm) Given a set of points (in N dimensions), find another point which minimises the sum of the distances from that point to each of the others.
- post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
- posttranscriptional — Genetics, Biochemistry. occurring after the formation of RNA from DNA but before the RNA strand leaves the nucleus.
- preproduction model — a prototype of a product before the product goes into full-scale production
- preproduction trial — a trial to test a prototype of a product before the product goes into full-scale production
- pride-of-california — a shrubby plant, Lathyrus splendens, of the legume family, native to southern California, having showy clusters of pale rose-pink, violet, or magenta flowers and large, smooth, beaked pods.
- priority scheduling — (operating system) Processes scheduling in which the scheduler selects tasks to run based on their priority as opposed to, say, a simple round-robin. Priorities may be static or dynamic. Static priorities are assigned at the time of creation, while dynamic priorities are based on the processes' behaviour while in the system. For example, the scheduler may favour I/O-intensive tasks so that expensive requests can be issued as early as possible. A danger of priority scheduling is starvation, in which processes with lower priorities are not given the opportunity to run. In order to avoid starvation, in preemptive scheduling, the priority of a process is gradually reduced while it is running. Eventually, the priority of the running process will no longer be the highest, and the next process will start running. This method is called aging.
- prismatic telescope — a telescope having an eyepiece at the side or top equipped with a reflecting prism, used for taking sights at steep angles.
- private first class — a soldier ranking above a private and below a corporal or specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army, and above a private and below a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
- production platform — offshore power station
- professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
- professional school — a postgraduate school or college which trains students for a particular profession
- propositional logic — (logic) (or "propositional calculus") A system of symbolic logic using symbols to stand for whole propositions and logical connectives. Propositional logic only considers whether a proposition is true or false. In contrast to predicate logic, it does not consider the internal structure of propositions.
- pseudo-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- pseudo-hieroglyphic — noting or pertaining to a script dating from the second millennium b.c. that appears to be syllabic and to represent the Phoenician language and that is inscribed on objects found at Byblos.
- pseudo-intellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- pseudopsychological — of or relating to psychology.
- psychoendocrinology — the study of the relationship between the endocrine system and various symptoms or types of mental illness.
- psychological novel — a novel that focuses on the complex mental and emotional lives of its characters and explores the various levels of mental activity.
- psychophysiological — of or relating to psychophysiology.
- psychotechnological — of or relating to psychotechnology
- public intellectual — an intellectual, often a noted specialist in a particular field, who has become well-known to the general public for a willingness to comment on current affairs
- public-interest law — a branch of law that often utilizes class-action suits to protect the interest of a large group or of the public at large, as in matters relating to racial discrimination, air pollution, etc.
- public-opinion poll — a poll taken by sampling a cross section of the public in an effort to predict election results or to estimate public attitudes on issues.
- puerperal psychosis — a mental disorder sometimes occurring in women after childbirth, characterized by deep depression, delusions of the child's death, and homicidal feelings towards the child
- radiopharmaceutical — any of a number of radioactive drugs used diagnostically or therapeutically.
- reciprocal exchange — an unincorporated association formed so that its members can participate in reciprocal insurance.
- reciprocal leveling — leveling between two widely separated points in which observations are made in both directions to eliminate the effects of atmospheric refraction and the curvature of the earth.
- reciprocity failure — a failure of the two exposure variables, light intensity and exposure time, to behave in a reciprocal fashion at very high or very low values
- reconceptualization — to form into a concept; make a concept of.
- reduction potential — (in a galvanic cell) the potential of the electrode at which reduction occurs.