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17-letter words containing p, o, t, a, f

  • judgment of paris — the decision by Paris to award Aphrodite the golden apple of discord competed for by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera.
  • laplace transform — a map of a function, as a signal, defined especially for positive real values, as time greater than zero, into another domain where the function is represented as a sum of exponentials.
  • least fixed point — (mathematics)   A function f may have many fixed points (x such that f x = x). For example, any value is a fixed point of the identity function, (\ x . x). If f is recursive, we can represent it as f = fix F where F is some higher-order function and fix F = F (fix F). The standard denotational semantics of f is then given by the least fixed point of F. This is the least upper bound of the infinite sequence (the ascending Kleene chain) obtained by repeatedly applying F to the totally undefined value, bottom. I.e. fix F = LUB {bottom, F bottom, F (F bottom), ...}. The least fixed point is guaranteed to exist for a continuous function over a cpo.
  • life of the party — most lively, outgoing person
  • matter of opinion — a point open to question; a debatable statement
  • mayflower compact — an agreement to establish a government, entered into by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620.
  • method of payment — cash, credit card, cheque, etc.
  • mode of transport — means of travel
  • non-profit-making — A non-profit-making organization or charity is not run with the intention of making a profit.
  • non-proliferation — Non-proliferation is the limiting of the production and spread of something such as nuclear or chemical weapons.
  • not spare oneself — to exert oneself to the full
  • one-parent family — A one-parent family is a family that consists of one parent and his or her children living together.
  • pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
  • pacific tree frog — a common terrestrial frog, Hyla regilla, of western North America, having a dark stripe along each side of the head.
  • palette of narmer — a king of Egypt identified by modern scholars as the Menes of tradition and depicted as the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt on an ancient slate tablet (Narmer Palette or Palette of Narmer) c3200 b.c. with relief carvings on both sides.
  • paratyphoid fever — Also called paratyphoid fever. an infectious disease, similar in some of its symptoms to typhoid fever but usually milder, caused by any of several bacilli of the genus Salmonella other than S. typhi.
  • parts of kesteven — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
  • pate de foie gras — See under foie gras.
  • peacock butterfly — a European nymphalid butterfly, Inachis io, having reddish-brown wings each marked with a purple eyespot
  • peer of the realm — any of a class of peers in Great Britain and Ireland entitled by heredity to sit in the House of Lords.
  • perforation gauge — a marked ruler used to measure the number of perforations per unit length along the borders of a stamp.
  • petrol filler cap — a small cover that goes over the hole in a vehicle into which you put petrol
  • phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
  • photofluorography — photography of images produced by a fluoroscopic examination, used in x-ray examination of the lungs of large groups of people.
  • play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • polarizing filter — a camera lens filter used to control the plane of polarization of light entering the lens.
  • political refugee — a person who has fled from a homeland because of political persecution.
  • port orford cedar — a tall tree, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, of coastal Oregon, having flattened, scalelike foliage and wood highly valued as timber.
  • portfolio manager — a person employed by others to make investments for them
  • positive feedback — Electronics. the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input (negative feedback) or to aid the input (positive feedback) acoustic feedback.
  • potassium sulfate — a crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 2 SO 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers, alums, and mineral water, and as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
  • potato leafhopper — any of various leafhoppers that are serious pests, damaging a wide variety of cultivated and wild plants, especially potatoes.
  • power of attorney — a written document given by one person or party to another authorizing the latter to act for the former.
  • pre-configuration — the relative disposition or arrangement of the parts or elements of a thing.
  • pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
  • pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
  • pre-qualification — a quality, accomplishment, etc., that fits a person for some function, office, or the like.
  • prefect apostolic — the administrator, usually below the rank of bishop, in charge of a prefecture apostolic.
  • preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.
  • probation officer — an officer who investigates and reports on the conduct of offenders who are free on probation.
  • procurator fiscal — In the Scottish legal system, the procurator fiscal is a public official who puts people on trial.
  • proportional font — a font type in which the width of letters and symbols varies depending on the letter or symbol
  • protection factor — a figure representing the relative degree of protection from the sun's rays afforded by a particular sunscreen
  • protective tariff — a tariff levied on imports to protect the domestic economy rather than to raise revenue
  • put in a word for — to make favourable mention of (someone); recommend
  • refractory period — a short period after a nerve or muscle cell fires during which the cell cannot respond to additional stimulation.
  • return of capital — A return of capital is a situation in which you receive back money that was previously invested.
  • rotation of crops — a system of rotating in a fixed order the kinds of crops, as grain or grass, grown in the same field, to maintain soil fertility
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