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20-letter words containing p, o, t, e, r

  • pride of the morning — light mist or precipitation observed at sea in the morning and regarded as indicating a fine day.
  • primary optical area — a point in or toward the upper left-hand corner of a printed page, advertisement, or the like, looked at first in reading. Abbreviation: POA.
  • primary spermatocyte — a male germ cell (primary spermatocyte) that gives rise by meiosis to a pair of haploid cells (secondary spermatocytes) that give rise in turn to spermatids.
  • prime number theorem — the theorem that the number of prime numbers less than or equal to a given number is approximately equal to the given number divided by its natural logarithm.
  • primitive polynomial — a polynomial that has content equal to 1. Compare content1 (def 11a).
  • prince rupert's drop — a glass bead in the shape of a teardrop, a by-product of the glass-making process, formed by molten glass falling into water. The body of the drop can withstand great force, for example a hammer blow, but the whole will explode if the tail is nipped or the surface scored
  • princeton university — (body, education)   Chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was British North America's fourth college. First located in Elizabeth, then in Newark, the College moved to Princeton in 1756. The College was housed in Nassau Hall, newly built on land donated by Nathaniel and Rebeckah FitzRandolph. Nassau Hall contained the entire College for nearly half a century. The College was officially renamed Princeton University in 1896; five years later in 1900 the Graduate School was established. Fully coeducational since 1969, Princeton now enrolls approximately 6,400 students (4,535 undergraduates and 1,866 graduate students). The ratio of full-time students to faculty members (in full-time equivalents) is eight to one. Today Princeton's main campus in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township consists of more than 5.5 million square feet of space in 160 buildings on 600 acres. The University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro consists of one million square feet of space in four complexes on 340 acres. As Mercer County's largest private employer and one of the largest in the Mercer/Middlesex/Somerset County region, with approximately 4,830 permanent employees - including more than 1,000 faculty members - the University plays a major role in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the region.
  • priority inheritance — (parallel)   A technique for avoiding priority inversion by temporarily raising the prioriry of all processes that want to access a shared resource to the highest priority level of any of them. Priority inversion occurs where a low priority process, L is holding a resource required by a high priority process, H, but L is not running because a medium priority process, M is running. Under priority inheritance, L temporarily inherits H's priority, allowing L to run and release the resource H is waiting for. For example, an ambulance (H) is stuck behind a lorry (L) waiting at a junction (the shared resource) for a gap in a line of cars (M) using the junction. Applying priority inheritance, the cars give way to the lorry as they would to the ambulance, thus allowing the lorry and then the ambulance to use the junction.
  • private investigator — private detective. Abbreviation: PI, p.i., P.I.
  • proactive inhibition — the tendency for earlier memories to interfere with the retrieval of material learned later
  • procedural agreement — regulations agreed between the parties to collective bargaining, defining the bargaining units, bargaining scope, procedures for collective bargaining, and the facilities to be provided to trade union representatives
  • production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
  • prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
  • proof of the pudding — the true value or quality of something, as seen when it is experienced, tried, or put to use: The proof of the pudding for a business is what customers say about it.
  • property development — the business of buying land and buildings and then making improvements to them so that their selling price exceeds the price paid for them
  • property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
  • proportional counter — a radiation counter in which the strength of each electric pulse generated per count is proportional to the energy of the particle or photon producing the pulse, alpha particles producing a different electric pulse from beta rays.
  • proprietary medicine — a drug or agent manufactured and distributed under a trade name
  • propylphenyl acetate — phenylpropyl acetate.
  • prosecuting attorney — the public officer in a county, district, or other jurisdiction charged with carrying on the prosecution in criminal proceedings.
  • prosthetic dentistry — prosthodontics.
  • prothonotary warbler — a wood warbler, Protonotaria citrea, of the eastern U.S., having an orange-yellow head and underparts, and bluish-gray wings and tail.
  • pseudoparenchymatous — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
  • psychometric testing — the use of psychometric tests, often as a selection method
  • psychomotor epilepsy — temporal-lobe epilepsy.
  • put the hard word on — to ask or demand something from
  • pythagoras's theorem — (mathematics)   The theorem of geometry, named after Pythagoras, of Samos, Ionia, stating that, for a right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides. I.e. if the longest side has length A and the other sides have lengths B and C (in any units), A^2 = B^2 + C^2 (2004-02-12)
  • queen of the prairie — a tall plant, Filipendula rubra, of the rose family, having branching clusters of pink flowers, growing in meadows and prairies.
  • rapid reaction force — a force that can be deployed swiftly to a site of conflict or potential conflict
  • read-eval-print loop — (language, LISP, programming)   (REPL) A programming structure within LISP which repeatedly reads a form from the user, evaluates it, and displays the result. A read-eval-print loop forms the basis of the Top-Level shell that programmers of the LISP family of languages interact with. In many dialects of LISP a very simple REPL could be implemented as: (loop (print (eval (read)))). (2003-06-23)
  • real-time processing — data-processing by a computer which receives constantly changing data, such as information relating to air-traffic control, travel booking systems, etc, and processes it sufficiently rapidly to be able to control the source of the data
  • reciprocating engine — an engine in which one or more pistons move backwards and forwards inside a cylinder or cylinders
  • recreational therapy — therapy by means of recreational activities engaged in by the patient
  • reflecting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
  • refracting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
  • refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
  • regional development — aid-giving to poorer areas or countries
  • relative deprivation — the perception of an unfair disparity between one's situation and that of others.
  • relative probability — a measure or estimate of the degree of confidence one may have in the occurrence of an event, defined as the limit of the proportion observed in a sample as the sample size tends to infinity
  • request for proposal — (programming)   (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
  • respecter of persons — one whose behavior toward people is influenced by their social status, prestige, etc.
  • respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
  • retinitis pigmentosa — degeneration of the retina manifested by night blindness and gradual loss of peripheral vision, eventually resulting in tunnel vision or total blindness.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • rotations per minute — revolutions per minute
  • royal leamington spa — a city in Warwickshire, central England: health resort.
  • rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
  • sailor's breastplate — a knot consisting of three overlapping loops formed by a single rope passed alternately over and under itself at crossings.
  • santa cruz operation — (SCO) A supplier of Unix systems for Intel microprocessors. They supply Xenix and Open Desktop. Founded in 1979, SCO became a public company in May, 1993 and trades on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol SCOC. SCO maintains its world headquarters in Santa Cruz, California, USA; a European headquarters in Watford, England; a Government Systems Group in Reston, Virginia; and offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and throughout Europe and the United States. In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited of Cambridge, England, the leading supplier of Unix System windowing software.
  • satellite photograph — a photograph taken by an artificial satellite from space
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