14-letter words containing p, l, a, s
- assault troops — soldiers of the infantry who are specially trained to lead an attack
- assault weapon — any of various automatic and semiautomatic military firearms utilizing an intermediate-power cartridge, designed for individual use. Compare assault rifle.
- assembly plant — An assembly plant is a factory where large items such as cars are put together, usually using parts which have been made in other factories.
- assembly point — a designated place where people have been told to wait after evacuating a building in the event of a fire or other emergency
- assemblyperson — a member of a legislative assembly, especially a member of the lower house of the legislature in certain states of the U.S.
- assisted place — a place at a private school reserved for a pupil from a family with a low income, with the fees paid by the government
- asymptotically — of or relating to an asymptote.
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- autotransplant — autograft.
- backstrap loom — a simple horizontal loom, used especially in Central and South America, on which one of two beams holding the warp yarn is attached to a strap that passes across the weaver's back.
- balance spring — hairspring.
- ballast pocket — a depression that is formed beneath the ballast layer by penetration of ballast particles into the subgrade and that tends to collect moisture.
- ballet slipper — a heelless cloth or leather slipper worn by ballet dancers.
- balsam of peru — an aromatic balsam that is obtained from the tropical South American leguminous tree Myroxylon pereirae and is similar to balsam of Tolu
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
- baptismal vows — the solemn promises made during baptism, either by the person baptized or by his or her sponsors
- bay psalm book — a translation of the Psalms by John Eliot and others: the first book published (1640) in America.
- bicuspid valve — mitral valve
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bitmap display — (hardware) A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
- black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- black skipjack — a small spotted tuna, Euthynnus yaito, of Indo-Pacific seas
- blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
- block sampling — the selection of a corpus for statistical literary analysis by random selection of a starting point and consideration of the continuous passage following it
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- bulk transport — the transport of large quantities of goods or commodities in lorries, ships, or by rail
- bush telegraph — a means of communication between primitive peoples over large areas, as by drum beats
- call-up papers — a letter containing order to report for service
- caller display — a facility which shows the number of an incoming call
- cambridge lisp — A flavour of Lisp using BCPL. Sources owned by Fitznorman partners.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp counselor — activities supervisor
- campanulaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Campanulaceae, a family of temperate and subtropical plants, including the campanulas, having bell-shaped nodding flowers
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- campylotropous — (of an ovule) curved so that the micropyle and funiculus almost touch
- can't help sth — If you can't help the way you feel or behave, you cannot control it or stop it happening. You can also say that you can't help yourself.
- cape peninsula — (in South Africa) the peninsula and the part of the mainland on which Cape Town and most of its suburbs are located
- capital assets — any assets, tangible or intangible, that are held for long-term investment
- capitalisation — The act or process of capitalising.
- captain's walk — widow's walk
- carpet slipper — Carpet slippers are soft, comfortable slippers.
- castrop-rauxel — an industrial city in W Germany, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Pop: 78 208 (2003 est)
- catastrophical — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
- cavalier poets — a group of mid-17th-century English lyric poets, mostly courtiers of Charles I. Chief among them were Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace
- celestial pole — either of the two points at which the earth's axis, extended to infinity, would intersect the celestial sphere