23-letter words containing p, o, t, s
- past one's sell-by date — If you say that someone or something is past their sell-by date, you mean they are no longer effective, interesting, or useful.
- pat someone on the back — to congratulate or encourage someone
- pay one's last respects — If you pay your last respects to someone who has just died, you show your respect or affection for them by coming to see their body or their grave.
- percentage distribution — a frequency distribution is which individual frequencies are shown as a percentage of the total frequencies
- pest control department — the local government department responsible for controlling such pests as rats and mice
- pharmaceuticals company — a company specialising in developing and marketing pharmaceuticals
- photoelectric threshold — the minimum frequency or maximum wavelength of incident radiation necessary to release photons from a given surface.
- phyletic classification — classification of organisms based on their assumed evolutionary histories and relationships.
- physiological phonetics — the branch of phonetics that deals with the motive processes, anatomical measurements, spirometric properties, muscle and membrane tone, and kinetic aspects of the production of speech and with related aspects of the reception of speech.
- pithecanthropus erectus — Java man
- plan position indicator — a radarscope on which an object reflecting radar waves shows its bearing and distance from the radar detector by causing a spot of light to appear on a screen that represents a map of the area around the detector. Abbreviation: PPI.
- planetesimal hypothesis — one of the small celestial bodies that, according to one theory (planetesimal hypothesis) were fused together to form the planets of the solar system.
- political incorrectness — Political incorrectness is the attitude or policy shown by someone who does not care if they offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
- positive bending moment — a bending moment that produces concave bending at the middle of a simple supported beam
- positive discrimination — special opportunities
- postcode discrimination — discrimination on the basis of the area where someone lives, with relation to employment, credit rating, etc
- posthypnotic suggestion — a suggestion made to the subject while in a hypnotic trance, to be acted upon at some time after emerging from the trance
- potassium acid tartrate — cream of tartar.
- potassium monophosphate — any of the three orthophosphates of potassium ((potassium monophosphate) (K 2 HPO 4), (potassium diphosphate) (KH 2 PO 4), and (tripotassium phosphate) (K 3 PO 4) )
- presidential government — a system of government in which the powers of the president are constitutionally separate from those of the legislature.
- price escalation clause — a clause in a contract allowing the seller to raise prices if the cost of inputs increases
- printer access protocol — (networking, protocol, printer) (PAP) A protocol used in Mac OS Appletalk to provide bi-directional communication between PostScript printers and the client computer.
- probabilistic automaton — nondeterministic automaton
- process intensification — Process intensification is a change made to a process to make it work in a smaller volume for the same performance.
- professional misconduct — a violation of the rules or boundaries set by the governing body of a profession
- profit and loss account — income account (def 2).
- progressive cavity pump — A progressive cavity pump is a pump with an electric motor that rotates rods to make fluid in cavities move upward.
- psychomotor retardation — a generalized slowing of psychological and physical activity, frequently occurring as a symptom of severe depression.
- public sector borrowing — government borrowing to fund the public sector
- put in a false position — to cause misunderstanding of the intentions, opinions, etc. of
- put one's finger on sth — If you put your finger on something, for example a reason or problem, you see and identify exactly what it is.
- put the bite on someone — to ask someone for money
- put the record straight — to correct an error or misunderstanding
- put through one's paces — a rate of movement, especially in stepping, walking, etc.: to walk at a brisk pace of five miles an hour.
- quote chapter and verse — [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt from an appropriate bible. "I don't care if "rn" gets it wrong; "Followup-To: poster" is explicitly permitted by RFC 1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." See also legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
- real simple syndication — (spelling) Illiterate form of Really Simple Syndication.
- refinery waste disposal — Refinery waste disposal is the system for dealing with waste materials, especially hazardous ones, in a refinery.
- relative sunspot number — a number indicating the degree of sunspot activity on the sun as a factor of observer idiosyncrasies, the number of sunspot groups, and the number of individual sunspots.
- remote desktop protocol — (protocol) (RDP) A Microsoft protocol that provides remote display and input for Windows. RDP's video driver renders display output by sending packets to the client which translates them into corresponding Microsoft Win32 graphics device interface API calls. Client mouse and keyboard events are redirected from the client to virtual keyboard and mouse drivers on the server. RDP 4.0 was introduced with Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. Windows 2000 Terminal Services included RDP 5.0. The Terminal Services Advanced Client (TSAC), an RDP client based on an ActiveX control, also supports RDP 5.0. RDP 5.0 provides enhanced performance over low-speed connections. Windows XP uses RDP 5.1 and includes Remote Desktop Web Connection, which is an updated version of the TSAC. RDP extends the ITU T.120 protocols, allowing separate virtual channels for device communication and presentation data from the server, as well as encrypted mouse and keyboard data. Compare: VNC.
- respectability politics — the set of beliefs holding that conformity to socially acceptable or mainstream standards of appearance and behavior will protect a member of a marginalized or minority group from prejudices and systemic injustices: Black respectability politics perpetuate the fiction of a meritocracy in public education.
- respondent conditioning — conditioning (def 2).
- response generalization — generalization (def 4b).
- response-generalization — the act or process of generalizing.
- retrolental fibroplasia — an unusual eye disease occurring in premature infants, usually from being given high concentrations of oxygen, which causes abnormal formation of fibrous tissue behind the lens and often results in blindness.
- reverse polish notation — postfix notation
- rub sb up the wrong way — If you rub someone up the wrong way in British English, or rub someone the wrong way in American English, you offend or annoy them without intending to.
- saint christopher-nevis — St. Kitts-Nevis.
- schizotypal personality — a personality disorder characterized by a group of symptoms similar to but less severe than schizophrenia, as odd behavior, peculiar thinking, and social isolation.
- scottish national party — a political party advocating the independence of Scotland, founded in 1934
- separation of variables — a grouping of the terms of an ordinary differential equation so that associated with each differential is a factor consisting entirely of functions of the independent variable appearing in the differential.