15-letter words containing p, l, i, e, s
- palaeomagnetist — a student of or expert in palaeomagnetism
- palais de danse — a dance hall
- paleogeophysics — (used with a plural verb) inferred geophysical conditions or processes of designated periods of the geologic past.
- paracel islands — a group of uninhabited islets and reefs in the N South China Sea, the subject of territorial claims by China and Vietnam
- paradise flower — a prickly vine, Solanum wendlandii, of the nightshade family, native to Costa Rica, having branched clusters of showy lilac-blue flowers.
- paradise valley — a town in SW Arizona.
- parallel cousin — a cousin who is the child either of one's mother's sister or of one's father's brother.
- parasiticalness — the condition or characteristic of being parasitic
- partial eclipse — astronomy
- passifloraceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Passifloraceae, a tropical and subtropical family of climbing plants including the passionflowers: the flowers have five petals and threadlike parts forming a dense mass (corona) around the central disc
- past participle — a participle with past, perfect, or passive meaning, as fallen, sung, defeated; perfect participle: used in English and other languages in forming the present perfect, pluperfect, and passive and as an adjective.
- pearly nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- pedestrian mall — A pedestrian mall is the same as a pedestrian precinct.
- penal servitude — imprisonment together with hard labor.
- percussion lock — a gunlock on a firearm that fires by striking a percussion cap.
- percussion tool — a power driven tool which operates by striking rapid blows: the power may be electricity or compressed air
- perissosyllabic — (of a line of verse) containing more syllables than expected for the metre being used
- peroxysulphuric — as in peroxysulphuric acid
- personal friend — a person who is a friend, rather than a colleague or acquaintance
- personal injury — injury to an individual
- personalization — to have marked with one's initials, name, or monogram: to personalize stationery.
- peruvian balsam — Peru balsam.
- pessimistically — pertaining to or characterized by pessimism or the tendency to expect only bad outcomes; gloomy; joyless; unhopeful: His pessimistic outlook kept him from applying for jobs for which he was perfectly qualified.
- phenomenalistic — the doctrine that phenomena are the only objects of knowledge or the only form of reality.
- phenomenologies — the study of phenomena.
- phenomenologist — the study of phenomena.
- phlebosclerosis — sclerosis, or hardening, of the walls of veins.
- phloem necrosis — a disease of the American elm caused by a mycoplasmalike organism, characterized by yellowing and necrosis of the foliage and yellowish-brown discoloration of the phloem.
- phoenix islands — a group of eight coral islands in the central Pacific: administratively part of Kiribati. Area: 28 sq km (11 sq miles). The islands and surrounding waters form the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the world's largest marine protected area. Area: 410 500 sq km (158 500 sq miles)
- phosphorylative — of or relating to phosphorylation
- photoelasticity — the phenomenon of double refraction of polarized light by a transparent substance under elastic stress, used to measure strain in elastic, transparent materials.
- physical change — a usually reversible change in the physical properties of a substance, as size or shape: Freezing a liquid is a physical change.
- physical memory — (memory management) The memory hardware (normally RAM) installed in a computer. The term is only used in contrast to virtual memory.
- physicochemical — physical and chemical: the physicochemical properties of an isomer.
- pick-and-shovel — marked by drudgery; laborious: the pick-and-shovel work necessary to get a political campaign underway.
- pilgrim fathers — the Pilgrims (of Plymouth Colony)
- pilgrimage site — a shrine or other sacred place that people travel to as an act of religious devotion
- pilsner glass's — a pale, light lager beer.
- pinkster flower — a wild azalea, Rhododendron periclymenoides, of the U.S., having pink or purplish flowers.
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- pixels per inch — (unit, graphics) (ppi) The unit used to measure resolution of a bitmap display or video input device.
- plainclothesman — a police officer, especially a detective, who wears ordinary civilian clothes while on duty.
- plane surveying — the surveying of areas of limited size, making no corrections for the earth's curvature
- planet-stricken — believed to be adversely affected mentally or physically by the planets
- plantaginaceous — relating to or belonging to the family Plantaginaceae
- plastic surgeon — doctor who performs cosmetic surgery
- plastic surgery — the branch of surgery dealing with the repair or replacement of malformed, injured, or lost organs or tissues of the body, chiefly by the transplant of living tissues.
- plate tectonics — a theory of global tectonics in which the lithosphere is divided into a number of crustal plates, each of which moves on the plastic asthenosphere more or less independently to collide with, slide under, or move past adjacent plates.
- platform tennis — a variation of tennis played on a wooden platform enclosed with chicken wire in which the players hit a rubber ball with wooden paddles following the same basic rules as tennis except that only one serve is permitted and balls can be played off the back and side fences.
- platyhelminthes — a phylum of worms having bilateral symmetry and a soft, usually flattened body, comprising the flatworms.