18-letter words containing p, e, r, s, n
- pellitory of spain — a small Mediterranean plant, Anacyclus pyrethrum, the root of which contains an oil formerly used to relieve toothache: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pensioneer trustee — (in Britain) a person authorized by HMRC to oversee the management of a pension fund
- percussion flaking — a method of forming a flint tool by striking flakes from a stone core with another stone or a piece of bone or wood.
- percussion section — orchestra, group: drums, etc.
- percussion welding — a form of resistance welding in which the required pressure is provided by a hammerlike blow.
- perennial ryegrass — any of several European grasses of the genus Lolium, as L. perenne (perennial ryegrass) grown for forage in the U.S.
- perfect continuous — perfect progressive.
- performance artist — an artist that is involved in a theatrical presentation that incorporates various art forms, such as dance, sculpture, music, etc
- permanent hardness — hardness of water that cannot be removed by boiling as it results mainly from the presence of calcium and magnesium chlorides and sulphates
- permanent resident — an immigrant who has been given official residential status, often prior to being granted citizenship
- pernicious anaemia — Pernicious anaemia is a very severe blood disease.
- persistent cruelty — conduct causing fear of danger to the life or health of a spouse (used in matrimonial proceedings before magistrates)
- personal allowance — the amount of money you are allowed to earn each year without paying tax
- personal assistant — aide
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- personal exemption — Your personal exemption is the amount of money that is deducted from your gross income before you have to start paying income tax.
- personal insurance — insurance on personal risk, such as car insurance, health insurance or loss of earnings insurance
- personal organizer — a small notebook with sections for personal information, as dates and addresses.
- pescadores-islands — (used with a plural verb) Penghu.
- peters' projection — a form of modified world map projection that attempts to reflect accurately the relative surface areas of landmasses, an approach which gives greater prominence (than do standard representations) to equatorial countries
- phanerocrystalline — (of a rock) having the principal constituents in the form of crystals visible to the naked eye.
- phosphatidylserine — any of a class of phospholipids occurring in biological membranes and fats
- photoisomerization — isomerization induced by light.
- photomorphogenesis — plant development that is controlled by light.
- physical inventory — To carry out a physical inventory is to count all the stock on hand.
- pine tree shilling — a silver coin minted in Massachusetts in the mid to late 17th century, named for the pine tree within a circle shown on the obverse side.
- plains grasshopper — a large, destructive short-horned grasshopper, Brachystola magna, of the western U.S., marked by pinkish hind wings.
- pleasure principle — an automatic mental drive or instinct seeking to avoid pain and to obtain pleasure.
- plight one's troth — to make a promise of marriage
- plumber's merchant — a shop or business that sells things needed for the job of installing and repairing pipes, fixtures, etc, for water, drainage, and gas
- political prisoner — sb imprisoned for political dissidence
- polynesian tattler — a sandpiper, H. incanus, native to the Pacific coastal regions
- polystyrene cement — a purpose-made adhesive for fixing rigid polystyrene
- population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
- portuguese guinean — of or relating to Portuguese Guinea, a former name for Guinea-Bissau, or its inhabitants
- possessive pronoun — See at possessive (def 4a).
- post-impressionism — a varied development of Impressionism by a group of painters chiefly between 1880 and 1900 stressing formal structure, as with Cézanne and Seurat, or the expressive possibilities of form and color, as with Van Gogh and Gauguin.
- post-revolutionary — of, pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of a revolution, or a sudden, complete, or marked change: a revolutionary junta.
- postmaster general — the executive head of the postal system of a country.
- postmillenarianism — postmillennialism.
- postviral syndrome — debilitating condition occurring as a sequel to viral illness
- potassium myronate — sinigrin.
- power-on self-test — (hardware, testing) (POST) A sequence of diagnostic tests that are run automatically by a device when the power is turned on. In a personal computer a typical POST sequence does the following: - checks that the system board is working - checks that the memory is working - compares the current system configuration with that recorded by the PC's configuration program to see if anything has been added or removed or broken - starts the video operation - checks that the diskette drive, hard disk drive, CD-ROM drive, and any other drives that may be installed are working. When POST is finished, typically it will beep, and then let your operating system start to boot. If POST finds an error, it may beep more than once (or possibly not at all if it is your PC speaker that is broken) and display a POST error message. These messages are often nothing more than a single ominous number. Some common numbers and their meanings are: 161 Dead battery (get a new battery for the system board) 162 Configuration changed (you added some memory or a new card to the PC) 301 Keyboard error (take the book off the corner of the keyboard) Because a successful POST indicates that the system is restored to known state, turning the power off and on is a standard way to reset a system whose software has hung. Compare 120 reset, Big Red Switch, power cycle.
- prayer of manasses — a book of the Apocrypha.
- pre-filled syringe — A pre-filled syringe is a disposable syringe that is supplied already loaded with the substance to be injected.
- 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.
- precious moonstone — moonstone (def 1).
- predation pressure — the effect of predation upon a population, resulting in the decrease in size of that population.
- preferred position — especially desirable advertising space for which, if it is specifically requested by the advertiser, a publication charges a premium rate.
- premiere screening — the first screening of a film at a cinema, etc