15-letter words containing p, c, o, s
- parallel cousin — a cousin who is the child either of one's mother's sister or of one's father's brother.
- parti québécois — (in Canada) a political party in Quebec, formed in 1968 and originally advocating the separation of Quebec from the rest of the country
- passenger coach — a carriage in which passengers sit
- passifloraceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Passifloraceae, a tropical and subtropical family of climbing plants including the passionflowers: the flowers have five petals and threadlike parts forming a dense mass (corona) around the central disc
- passport office — an office which issues passports
- past continuous — past progressive.
- pastel-coloured — pale-coloured; in a shade such as pink or pale blue
- peace offensive — an active program, policy, propaganda campaign, etc., by a national government for the purpose of terminating a war or period of hostility, lessening international tensions, or promoting peaceful cooperation with other nations.
- peachblow glass — an American art glass made in various pale colors and sometimes having an underlayer of milk glass.
- pectoral muscle — muscle of the chest
- percussion lock — a gunlock on a firearm that fires by striking a percussion cap.
- percussion tool — a power driven tool which operates by striking rapid blows: the power may be electricity or compressed air
- perfectionistic — a person who adheres to or believes in perfectionism.
- perfector press — a flatbed press for printing both sides of a sheet in one operation.
- perfunctoriness — performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial: perfunctory courtesy.
- pergamentaceous — (esp of plants) resembling parchment, whether in texture or composition
- periodic system — a system of classification of the elements based on the periodic law.
- perissosyllabic — (of a line of verse) containing more syllables than expected for the metre being used
- peroxysulphuric — as in peroxysulphuric acid
- person of color — the quality of an object or substance with respect to light reflected by the object, usually determined visually by measurement of hue, saturation, and brightness of the reflected light; saturation or chroma; hue.
- personal column — The personal column in a newspaper or magazine contains messages for individual people and advertisements of a private nature.
- personification — the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.
- pheasant coucal — a brown and black, red-eyed Australian bird, Centropus phasianinus, with a pheasantlike tail.
- phenakistoscope — an early form of a zoetrope in which figures are depicted in different poses around the edge of a disc. When the disc is spun, and the figures observed through the apertures around the edge of the disc, they appear to be moving
- phenomenalistic — the doctrine that phenomena are the only objects of knowledge or the only form of reality.
- philosophically — of or relating to philosophy: philosophical studies.
- phlebosclerosis — sclerosis, or hardening, of the walls of veins.
- phloem necrosis — a disease of the American elm caused by a mycoplasmalike organism, characterized by yellowing and necrosis of the foliage and yellowish-brown discoloration of the phloem.
- phosphocreatine — a compound, C 4 H 1 0 O 5 N 3 P, found chiefly in muscle, formed by the enzymatic interaction of an organic phosphate and creatine, the breakdown of which provides energy for muscle contraction.
- phosphorescence — the property of being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, as from slow oxidation in the case of phosphorus or after exposure to light or other radiation.
- phosphoric acid — any of three acids, orthophosphoric acid, H 3 PO 4 , metaphosphoric acid, HPO 3 , or pyrophosphoric acid, H 4 P 2 O 7 , derived from phosphorus pentoxide, P 2 O 5 , and various amounts of water.
- photo-secession — an association of photographers founded in New York City in 1902 by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen that advocated the development and public recognition of photography as a fine art.
- photodissociate — to split or break up molecules as a result of the absorption of photons
- photoelasticity — the phenomenon of double refraction of polarized light by a transparent substance under elastic stress, used to measure strain in elastic, transparent materials.
- photomicroscope — a microscope having an illuminator and a camera mechanism for producing a photomicrograph.
- physical memory — (memory management) The memory hardware (normally RAM) installed in a computer. The term is only used in contrast to virtual memory.
- physical optics — the branch of optics concerned with the wave properties of light, the superposition of waves, the deviation of light from its rectilinear propagation in a manner other than that considered by geometrical optics, the interaction of light with matter, and the quantum, corpuscular aspects of light.
- physicalization — to express in physical terms; give form or shape to: The dancers physicalized the mood of the music.
- physicochemical — physical and chemical: the physicochemical properties of an isomer.
- physiologically — of or relating to physiology.
- pick and choose — to choose or select from among a group: to pick a contestant from the audience.
- pick-and-shovel — marked by drudgery; laborious: the pick-and-shovel work necessary to get a political campaign underway.
- pickling onions — small onions suitable for pickling
- pictorial janus — K. Kahn, Xerox. Visual extension of Janus. Requires Strand88 and a PostScript interpreter.
- piero di cosimo — Piero di [pee-air-oh di;; Italian pye-raw dee] /piˈɛər oʊ dɪ;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ di/ (Show IPA), Piero di Cosimo.
- pissing contest — Slang: Vulgar. a contentious argument; confrontation.
- pistachio green — a light or medium shade of yellow green.
- pithecanthropus — a former genus of extinct hominids whose members have now been assigned to the proposed species Homo erectus.
- plainclothesman — a police officer, especially a detective, who wears ordinary civilian clothes while on duty.
- planck constant — the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, expressing the ratio of the energy of one quantum of radiation to the frequency of the radiation and approximately equal to 6.624 × 10− 27 erg-seconds. Symbol: h.