18-letter words containing p, e, a, l, d
- optical disk drive — (hardware) (Or "optical disc drive", "optical storage") A generic term for any device that reads and/or writes optical media, i.e. compact discs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray discs or future media that uses light (from a small laser) to read data off a removable, rotating disk. At least one such drive is commonly installed in most personal computers to allow them to play and/or record audio and video media and load and store data such as program installers. The floppy disk has been replaced by optical media due to its vastly greater capacity, e.g. 50,000 megabytes for a dual-layer blu-ray disc compared with 1.5 megabytes for a floppy (over 30,000 times as much).
- palm beach gardens — a city in SE Florida, near North Palm Beach.
- parallel reduction — A form of applicative order reduction in which all redexes in an expression are reduced simultaneously. Variants include parallel outermost reduction and lenient reduction. See normal order reduction.
- paraurethral gland — any of a group of vestigial glands located in the posterior wall of the urethra in women.
- partial derivative — the derivative of a function with respect to one of its variables with all other variables held constant.
- payload specialist — an astronaut trained to handle highly complex or classified equipment carried aboard a space shuttle and to conduct experiments in space.
- pectoral sandpiper — an American sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, the male of which, when courting, inflates its chest conspicuously.
- pedal steel guitar — an oblong, floor-mounted electrified guitar, usually having ten strings, fretted with a steel bar and producing a wailing sound that is modulated by use of a foot pedal.
- pennsylvania dutch — the descendants of 17th- and 18th-century settlers in Pennsylvania from southwest Germany and Switzerland.
- people's democracy — (in Communist ideology) a country or form of government in transition from bourgeois democracy to socialism. In this stage there is more than one class, the largest being the proletariat, led by the Communist Party, which is therefore the dominant power
- perceptual defence — the process by which it is thought that certain stimuli are either not perceived or are distorted due to their offensive, unpleasant, or threatening nature
- perpetual calendar — a calendar devised to be used for many years, as in determining the day of the week on which a given date falls.
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- pescadores-islands — (used with a plural verb) Penghu.
- peter and the wolf — a composition by Sergei Prokofiev written in 1936. It is a children's story with both music and text, spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra
- phenylacetaldehyde — a colorless, oily, water-insoluble liquid, C 3 H 1 4 O, having a hyacinthlike odor: used chiefly in perfumery.
- phosphatidylserine — any of a class of phospholipids occurring in biological membranes and fats
- phthalic anhydride — a white, crystalline, slightly water-soluble solid, C 8 H 4 O 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes, alkyd resins, and plasticizers.
- physical education — systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school or college program.
- pig-tailed macaque — a forest-dwelling southeast Asian macaque, Macaca nemestrina, having a short, curled tail, colonized for animal behavior studies.
- pileolated warbler — either of two western subspecies of Wilson's warbler.
- plane of incidence — a plane determined by a given ray, incident on a surface, and the normal at the point where the incident ray strikes the surface.
- planned parenthood — an organization that gives out information on the planning of the number and spacing of the births of one's children, as through the use of birth-control measures
- plate-glass window — a window that has glass which has been formed by rolling
- play cat and mouse — Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- play second fiddle — be considered less important
- play the race card — to introduce the subject of race into a public discussion, esp to gain a strategic advantage
- plenary indulgence — a remission of the total temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution. Compare indulgence (def 6).
- point d'angleterre — a bobbin lace in which the design is worked out with either a needle or bobbin.
- politically-minded — (of a person or group of people) interested in the way power is achieved and used in a country or society (through government, policy-making, etc)
- population density — ratio: inhabitants to area
- positively charged — having a positive charge
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
- potassium fluoride — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, toxic powder, KF, used chiefly as an insecticide, a disinfectant, and in etching glass.
- potential gradient — the rate of change of potential with respect to distance in the direction of greatest change.
- pour cold water on — If someone pours cold water on a plan or idea, they criticize it so much that people lose their enthusiasm for it.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- predicate calculus — predicate logic
- presenile dementia — a form of dementia, of unknown cause, starting before a person is old
- presidential suite — a suite of rooms, as in a hotel, suitable for a president or other head of state.
- primate of england — a title of the archbishop of Canterbury.
- principal meridian — a meridian line accurately laid out to serve as the reference meridian in land survey
- prisoner's dilemma — (in game theory) a scenario in which the outcome of one person's decision is determined by the simultaneous decisions of the other participants, resulting in a bad outcome for all of them if all act in their own self-interest.
- pseudo-socialistic — of or relating to socialists or socialism.
- pseudointellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- pull one's head in — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- pyromucic aldehyde — furfural.
- quartz-iodine lamp — a type of tungsten-halogen lamp containing small amounts of iodine and having a quartz envelope, operating at high temperature and producing an intense light for use in car headlamps, etc