15-letter words containing p, r, m, l
- plethysmography — the tracking of changes measured in bodily volume
- pleuropneumonia — pleurisy conjoined with pneumonia.
- plumber's snake — snake (def 3a).
- plumbers-friend — Machinery. a pistonlike reciprocating part moving within the cylinder of a pump or hydraulic device.
- plural marriage — (broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage: Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times. See Word Story at the current entry.
- pneumatic drill — a percussive power drill powered by compressed air
- poikilothermism — the state or quality of being cold-blooded, as fishes and reptiles.
- police marksman — a police officer skilled in precision shooting, esp with a sniper rifle
- polymorphically — in a polymorphic manner
- polynomial ring — the set of all polynomials in an indeterminate variable with coefficients that are elements of a given ring.
- polysomnography — a record of a person's sleep pattern, breathing, heart activity, and limb movements during sleep. Abbreviation: PSG.
- portable pixmap — (file format) (PPM) A colour image file format. A PPM file contains the following: a two character "{magic number}" - "P3", the width in pixels, the height in pixels, the maximum colour component value, HEIGHT rows of WIDTH {pixels}. The rows are ordered from top to bottom with the pixels in each row ordered from left to right. Each pixel is represented as three values for red, green, and blue. All parts are separated by whitespace and numbers are in decimal ASCIII representation. A zero pixel component means that colour is absent. Characters from a "#" to the next end-of-line are ignored and no line should be longer than 70 characters. Here is an example of a small pixmap in this format: P3 # feep.ppm 4 4 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 15 0 0 0 0 15 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 7 0 0 0 15 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A "RAWBITS" variant has magic number "P6", pixel values are stored as plain binary bytes, instead of ASCII decimal and no whitespace is allowed after a single whitespace character after the maximum colour component value which must be less than or equal to 255.
- portland cement — a type of hydraulic cement usually made by burning a mixture of limestone and clay in a kiln.
- poststimulatory — following stimulation
- poultry farming — breeding and keeping fowl
- power amplifier — an amplifier for increasing the power of a signal.
- pragmaticalness — the quality of being pragmatical or meddlesome
- predeterminable — able to be predetermined; able to be determined in advance
- preferentialism — the economic system of preference, esp amongst British commonwealth countries
- preimplantation — relating to the period before implantation in the uterus
- premillennially — from a premillennial point of view
- prima ballerina — the principal ballerina in a ballet company.
- primary quality — any of the qualities inherent in an object, namely quantity, extent, figure, solidity, and motion or rest.
- primary sealing — Primary sealing is devices used for sealing tanks, to reduce emissions, often made of foam.
- primordial soup — the seas and atmosphere as they existed on earth before the existence of life, consisting primarily of an oxygen-free gaseous mixture containing chiefly water, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.
- primrose family — the plant family Primulaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants having simple, opposite, whorled, or basal leaves, flowers with a five-lobed corolla, and capsular fruit, and including cyclamen, loosestrife of the genus Lysimachia, pimpernel, primrose, and shooting star.
- primrose yellow — primrose (def 3).
- prism binocular — Usually, prism binoculars. Optics. binocular (def 1).
- prismatic layer — the middle layer of the shell of certain mollusks, consisting chiefly of crystals of calcium carbonate.
- problem-solving — skills, process: of finding solutions
- problematically — of the nature of a problem; doubtful; uncertain; questionable.
- professionalism — professional character, spirit, or methods.
- programmability — capable of being programmed.
- provost marshal — Army. an officer on the staff of a commander, charged with the maintaining of order and with other police functions within a command.
- proximity talks — a diplomatic process whereby an impartial representative acts as go-between for two opposing parties who are willing to attend the same conference but unwilling to meet face to face
- pseudo-military — of, for, or pertaining to the army or armed forces, often as distinguished from the navy: from civilian to military life.
- pulmobranchiate — possessing a pulmobranch
- pulmonary valve — a semilunar valve between the pulmonary artery and the right ventricle of the heart that prevents the blood from flowing back into the right ventricle.
- pure and simple — sheer, utter
- purple trillium — birthroot (def 1).
- purslane family — the plant family Portulacaceae, characterized by chiefly herbaceous plants having simple, often fleshy leaves, sometimes showy flowers, and capsular fruit, and including bitterroot, purslane, red maids, rose moss, and spring beauty.
- pyramid selling — Pyramid selling is a method of selling in which one person buys a supply of a particular product direct from the manufacturer and then sells it to a number of other people at an increased price. These people sell it on to others in a similar way, but eventually the final buyers are only able to sell the product for less than they paid for it.
- pyramidal tract — any of four tracts of descending motor fibers that extend in pairs down each side of the spinal column and function in voluntary movement.
- random sampling — a method of selecting a sample (random sample) from a statistical population in such a way that every possible sample that could be selected has a predetermined probability of being selected.
- real programmer — (job, humour) (From the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche") A variety of hacker possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The archetypal "Real Programmer" likes to program on the bare metal and is very good at it, remembers the binary op codes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that high-level languages are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been bummed into a state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appals. Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers - because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their successors generally consider it a Good Thing that there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see "The Story of Mel". The term itself was popularised by a 1983 Datamation article "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" by Ed Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line form.
- regular premium — A regular premium is money paid to buy insurance coverage in installments at particular time intervals, such as monthly or annually.
- retirement plan — a systematic plan made and kept by an individual for setting aside income for his or her future retirement.
- rhombencephalon — the hindbrain.
- rhyming couplet — a pair of lines in poetry that rhyme and usually have the same rhythm
- rod pumped well — A rod pumped well is a well with a nodding donkey to remove fluid mechanically.