13-letter words containing p, l, e, a
- black crappie — a dark, spotted crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus)
- black panther — (in the US) a member of a militant Black political party (1965–82) founded to end the political dominance of White people
- blaise pascal — Blaise [bleyz;; French blez] /bleɪz;; French blɛz/ (Show IPA), 1623–62, French philosopher and mathematician.
- blasphemously — uttering, containing, or exhibiting blasphemy; irreverent; profane.
- blepharoplast — a cylindrical cytoplasmic body in protozoa
- blepharospasm — spasm of the muscle of the eyelids, causing the eyes to shut tightly, either as a response to painful stimuli or occurring as a form of dystonia
- blow an eprom — /bloh *n ee'prom/ (Or "blast", "burn") To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM) that preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard) even though the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.
- blue copperas — a salt, copper sulfate, CuSO 4 ⋅5H 2 O, occurring naturally as large transparent, deep-blue triclinic crystals, appearing in its anhydrous state as a white powder: used chiefly as a mordant, insecticide, fungicide, and in engraving.
- border patrol — a government agency in charge of preventing terrorists, weapons, and illegal immigrants entering the country
- boycott apple — (legal) Some time before 1989, Apple Computer, Inc. started a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, claiming they had breeched Apple's copyright on the look and feel of the Macintosh user interface. In December 1989, Xerox failed to sue Apple Computer, claiming that the software for Apple's Lisa computer and Macintosh Finder, both copyrighted in 1987, were derived from two Xerox programs: Smalltalk, developed in the mid-1970s and Star, copyrighted in 1981. Apple wanted to stop people from writing any program that worked even vaguely like a Macintosh. If such look and feel lawsuits succeed they could put an end to free software that could substitute for commercial software. In the weeks after the suit was filed, Usenet reverberated with condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters Richard Stallman, John Gilmore and Paul Rubin decided to take action against Apple. Apple's reputation as a force for progress came from having made better computers; but The League for Programming Freedom believed that Apple wanted to make all non-Apple computers worse. They therefore campaigned to discourage people from using Apple products or working for Apple or any other company threatening similar obstructionist tactics (e.g. Lotus and Xerox). Because of this boycott the Free Software Foundation for a long time didn't support Macintosh Unix in their software. In 1995, the LPF and the FSF decided to end the boycott.
- bridge player — a person who plays the game of bridge
- brook lamprey — a jawless fish, Lampetra planeri, native to the European part of the Atlantic Ocean and the northwest Mediterranean
- bull elephant — an adult male elephant
- bullace grape — the thick-skinned musk-scented purple grape produced by this plant: used to make wine
- business plan — A business plan is a detailed plan for setting up or developing a business, especially one that is written in order to borrow money.
- butterfly pea — any of several leguminous plants of the genus Clitoria, as C. mariana, of North America, having pale-blue flowers.
- calliper rule — a measuring instrument having two parallel jaws, one fixed at right angles to the end of a calibrated scale and the other sliding along it
- camp follower — If you describe someone as a camp follower, you mean that they do not officially belong to a particular group or movement but support it for their own advantage.
- campus police — police officers, security guards or students employed by a college or university to patrol the campus and to protect students, staff, and visitors
- campylobacter — a rod-shaped bacterium that causes infections in cattle and man. Unpasteurized milk infected with campylobacter is a common cause of gastroenteritis
- cap and bells — the traditional garb of a court jester, including a cap with bells attached to it
- cape coloured — (formerly, in South Africa) a racial classification under apartheid for people of mixed ethnic origin
- cape marigold — any composite plant of the genus Dimorphotheca, having variously colored, daisylike flowers.
- cape-farewell — Cape, a cape in S Greenland: most southerly point of Greenland.
- cape-flattery — Cape, a cape in NW Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, at the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait.
- capellmeister — a person in charge of an orchestra, esp in an 18th-century princely household
- capello index — a player rating website backed by Fabio Capello in which marks are awarded to football players in the top teams according to their performance in key skills of the game
- capital asset — fixed asset.
- capital lease — A capital lease is a lease which is treated as the purchase of the asset that is being leased.
- capitalizable — to write or print in capital letters letters or with an initial capital letter.
- capstan lathe — a lathe for repetitive work, having a rotatable turret resembling a capstan to hold tools for successive operations
- capstan table — drum table.
- capsule range — a small range of clothes by a particular designer, intended to be representative of the full range
- capsule shell — A capsule shell is an outer skin in which a medicinal substance is contained.
- card walloper — (jargon) An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs that do things like print people's paychecks. Compare code grinder. See also punched card, eighty-column mind.
- carpal tunnel — forearm to hand
- carpet beetle — any of various beetles of the genus Anthrenus, the larvae of which feed on carpets, furnishing fabrics, etc: family Dermestidae
- caryophyllene — (organic compound) A sesquiterpene (containing a cyclobutane ring) found in the essential oils of several plants such as clove and pepper.
- cattle plague — rinderpest.
- celiac plexus — solar plexus (def 1).
- central islip — a town on S Long Island, in SE New York.
- centripetally — Towards a centre or axis.
- century plant — an agave, Agave americana, native to tropical America but naturalized elsewhere, having very large spiny greyish leaves and greenish flowers on a tall fleshy stalk. It blooms only once in its life, after 10 to 30 years (formerly thought to flower after a century)
- cephalization — (in the evolution of animals) development of a head by the concentration of feeding and sensory organs and nervous tissue at the anterior end
- cephalometric — Relating to cephalometrics.
- cephalopodous — of, belonging to or relating to a cephalopod
- cephaloridine — a cephalosporin antibiotic often used in the treatment of bacterial infections
- cephalosporin — any of a group of broad-spectrum antibiotics obtained from fungi of the genus Cephalosporium
- cephalothorax — the anterior part of many crustaceans and some other arthropods consisting of a united head and thorax
- cerebrospinal — of or relating to the brain and spinal cord