18-letter words containing p, l, e, a, t
- nobiliary particle — a preposition forming part of a title of nobility or surname, as French de or German von.
- nonpartisan league — a political organization of farmers, founded in North Dakota in 1915, and extending to many states west of the Mississippi, with the aim of influencing agricultural legislation in state legislatures.
- nonpreferentialism — of, relating to, or of the nature of preference: preferential policies.
- normally aspirated — A normally aspirated or naturally aspirated engine breathes air at atmospheric pressure.
- north polar region — the region of land and water surrounding the North Pole.
- not a hope in hell — If you say that someone has not got a hope in hell of doing something, you are emphasizing that they will not be able to do it.
- nuclear capability — If a country has nuclear capability, it is able to produce nuclear power and usually nuclear weapons.
- numerical aperture — a measure of the resolving power of a microscope, equal to the index of refraction of the medium in which the object is placed multiplied by the sine of the angle made with the axis by the most oblique ray entering the instrument, the resolving power increasing as the product increases. Abbreviation: N.A.
- oblique-slip fault — a fault on which the movement is along both the strike and the dip of the fault
- octachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twelve isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing eight chlorine atoms.
- oedipus at colonus — a tragedy by Sophocles, written toward the end of his life and produced posthumously in 401? b.c.
- offset lithography — offset (def 6).
- operation overlord — the codename for the Allied invasion (June 1944) of northern France
- operationalisation — Alternative spelling of operationalization.
- operationalization — The act or process of operationalizing.
- optical brightener — an additive that dyes and brightens fabric or paper
- optical carrier 12 — (networking) (OC-12) A SONET rate of 12 * 51.84 = 622.08 megabits per second.
- optical carrier 48 — (networking) (OC-48) A SONET rate of 48 * 51.84 = 2488.32 megabits per second.
- optical disc drive — optical disk drive
- 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).
- optical microscope — traditional magnifying instrument
- oracle corporation — (company) The world's leading supplier of information management software. The company, worth $2 billion, offers its products, along with related consulting, education and support services in more than 90 countries around the world. Oracle is best known for its database management systems vendor and relational DBMS products. Oracle develops and markets Oracle Media Server and the Oracle7 family of software products for database management; Co-operative Development Environment and Oracle Co-operative Applications Oracle software runs on personal digital assistants, set-top boxs, IBM PCs, workstations, minicomputers, mainframes and massively parallel computers. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems on 2009-04-20. See also Adaptable User Interface, Bookviewer, CASE*Method, Component Integration Laboratories, DDE Manager, Online Media, Oracle Card, Oracle*CASE, siod. Address: Redwood Shores, CA, USA.
- oral contraceptive — birth-control pill.
- oriental scops owl — any of a group of small owls having ear tufts and a whistling call, especially Otus scops (Old World scops owl) and O. sunia (Oriental scops owl)
- over-extrapolation — to infer (an unknown) from something that is known; conjecture.
- overcapitalization — The state of being overcapitalized.
- overspecialization — excessive specialization, as in a field of study.
- pair of spectacles — a score of 0 in each innings of a match
- palaeoanthropology — the branch of anthropology concerned with primitive man
- paleoclimatologist — the branch of paleogeography dealing with the study of paleoclimates.
- parallel computing — parallel processing
- parallel evolution — the independent development of closely corresponding adaptive features in two or more groups of organisms that occupy different but equivalent habitats, as marsupial mammals in Australia and placental mammals on other continents.
- parallel importing — the importing of certain goods, esp pharmaceutical drugs, by dealers who undersell local manufacturers
- 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.
- parliamentarianism — advocacy of a parliamentary system of government.
- partial derivative — the derivative of a function with respect to one of its variables with all other variables held constant.
- partial evaluation — (compiler, algorithm) (Or "specialisation") An optimisation technique where the compiler evaluates some subexpressions at compile-time. For example, Partial evaluation might change the termination properties of the program if, for example, the expression (x * 0) was reduced to 0 it would terminate even if x (and thus x * 0) did not. It may be necessary to reorder an expression to partially evaluate it, e.g. f x y = (x + y) + 1 g z = f 3 z If we rewrite f: f x y = (x + 1) + y then the expression x+1 becomes a constant for the function g and we can say g z = f 3 z = (3 + 1) + z = 4 + z Partial evaluation of built-in functions applied to constant arguments is known as constant folding. See also full laziness.
- partial-vegetarian — a person who eats mostly plant foods, dairy products, and eggs, and occasionally chicken, fish, and red meat.
- particular average — a loss at sea, as through accident or negligence, that is borne solely by the owner of the lost property. Abbreviation: P.A.
- particulate filter — A particulate filter is a filter to remove particles that are present the air, for example in the exhaust of a diesel engine.
- particulate matter — Particulate matter is solid or liquid particles in the air, which are measured in PM-10 units and are particles with a diameter of ten micrometers or less.
- payload specialist — an astronaut trained to handle highly complex or classified equipment carried aboard a space shuttle and to conduct experiments in space.
- payment by results — a system of wage payment whereby all or part of the wage varies systematically according to the level of work performance of an employee
- peak-to-peak value — Peak-to-peak value is the maximum voltage change occurring during one cycle of alternating voltage or current.
- peano's postulates — a collection of axioms concerning the properties of the set of all positive integers, including the principle of mathematical induction.
- 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.
- pellitory of spain — a small Mediterranean plant, Anacyclus pyrethrum, the root of which contains an oil formerly used to relieve toothache: family Asteraceae (composites)
- pennsylvania dutch — the descendants of 17th- and 18th-century settlers in Pennsylvania from southwest Germany and Switzerland.