12-letter words containing p, l, a, s
- pennsylvania — a state in the E United States. 45,333 sq. mi. (117,410 sq. km). Capital: Harrisburg. Abbreviation: PA (for use with zip code), Pa., Penn., Penna.
- pension plan — a systematic plan created and maintained, as by a corporation, to make regular payments of benefits to retired or disabled employees, either on a contributory or a noncontributory basis.
- penthesileia — the daughter of Ares and queen of the Amazons, whom she led to the aid of Troy. She was slain by Achilles
- percussional — of or relating to percussion
- perez galdos — Benito [buh-nee-toh;; Spanish be-nee-taw] /bəˈni toʊ;; Spanish bɛˈni tɔ/ (Show IPA), 1843–1920, Spanish journalist, dramatist, and novelist.
- perivisceral — surrounding or situated about the viscera.
- perpetualism — a belief in the permanence of a given thing; the belief that a given thing (e.g. the world, a political system) will last forever
- perpetualist — someone who holds to any form of perpetualism
- persian gulf — strait in the Indian Ocean
- persian lamb — the young lamb of the Karakul sheep.
- personalised — to have marked with one's initials, name, or monogram: to personalize stationery.
- personalized — customized
- personalness — of, relating to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private: a personal opinion.
- perspectival — a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Compare aerial perspective, linear perspective.
- persuasively — able, fitted, or intended to persuade: a very persuasive argument.
- pestilential — producing or tending to produce pestilence.
- pestological — relating to pestology
- petaliferous — bearing or having petals.
- petrodollars — Petrodollars are a unit of money used to calculate how much a country has earned by exporting petroleum or natural gas.
- phalaenopsis — any of various epiphytic orchids of the genus Phalaenopsis, native to tropical Asia, having clusters of showy, variously colored flowers.
- phantasmical — pertaining to or of the nature of a phantasm; unreal; illusory; spectral: phantasmal creatures of nightmare.
- philadelphus — (Philadelphus) king of Pergamum c159–138 b.c.
- phosphatidyl — an atom or group of atoms containing one or more unpaired electrons derived from a phosphatide
- photoanalyst — a person who analyzes and interprets photographs, especially a military specialist in aerial or satellite photography.
- photoelastic — displaying photoelasticity; of or relating to photoelasticity
- photorealism — a style of painting flourishing in the 1970s, especially in the U.S., England, and France, and depicting commonplace scenes or ordinary people, with a meticulously detailed realism, flat images, and barely discernible brushwork that suggests and often is based on or incorporates an actual photograph.
- phragmoplast — the cytoplasmic structure that forms at the equator of the spindle after the chromosomes have divided during the anaphase of plant mitosis, and that initiates cell division.
- phrasal verb — a combination of verb and one or more adverbial or prepositional particles, as catch on, take off, bring up, or put up with, functioning as a single semantic unit and often having an idiomatic meaning that could not be predicted from the meanings of the individual parts.
- phylacteries — Judaism. either of two small, black, leather cubes containing a piece of parchment inscribed with verses 4–9 of Deut. 6, 13–21 of Deut. 11, and 1–16 of Ex. 13: one is attached with straps to the left arm and the other to the forehead during weekday morning prayers by Orthodox and Conservative Jewish men.
- physicalness — of or relating to the body: physical exercise.
- piano lesson — music class in playing the piano
- pictorialism — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- pictorialist — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- pig islander — a New Zealander
- pilot signal — a signal, as a flag or light, used to request a pilot.
- piss-elegant — displaying a contrived, often pretentious, sophistication, opulence, etc.
- plagiarising — to take and use by plagiarism.
- plagiaristic — an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author: It is said that he plagiarized Thoreau's plagiarism of a line written by Montaigne. Synonyms: appropriation, infringement, piracy, counterfeiting; theft, borrowing, cribbing, passing off.
- plaid screen — [XEROX PARC] A "special effect" that occurs when certain kinds of memory smashes overwrite the control blocks or image memory of a bit-mapped display. The term "salt and pepper" may refer to a different pattern of similar origin. Though the term as coined at PARC refers to the result of an error, some of the X demos induce plaid-screen effects deliberately as a display hack.
- plain as day — obvious
- plain-spoken — candid; frank; blunt.
- plainclothes — Plainclothes police officers wear ordinary clothes instead of a police uniform.
- planck's law — the law that energy associated with electromagnetic radiation, as light, is composed of discrete quanta of energy, each quantum equal to Planck's constant times the corresponding frequency of the radiation: the fundamental law of quantum mechanics.
- plane strain — Plane strain is a two-dimensional state of strain in which all the shape changes of a material happen on a single plane.
- plane stress — Plane stress is a two-dimensional state of stress in which all stress is applied in a single plane.
- planetesimal — one of the small celestial bodies that, according to one theory (planetesimal hypothesis) were fused together to form the planets of the solar system.
- planlessness — the state or condition of being planless
- plasma torch — an electrical device for converting a gas into a plasma, used for melting metal
- plasmasphere — a region of cool plasma surrounding the earth, extending 8000–25,000 miles (13,000–40,000 km) into space, and bounded by the plasmapause.
- plasmosomata — a kind of nucleoli