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17-letter words containing p, s, e

  • peppermint spirit — a green or colorless alcoholic solution of the volatile oil produced by the peppermint leaf, used as a carminative and flavoring agent.
  • percussion bullet — a bullet that is exploded by percussion
  • pere david's deer — a medium-sized, reddish-gray deer, Elaphurus davidianus, of which stocks were obtained in Peking in 1865 and brought to parks in Europe before the remaining Chinese deer were killed in 1900: the species is sustained in captivity.
  • performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
  • performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
  • periodic sentence — a sentence that, by leaving the completion of its main clause to the end, produces an effect of suspense, as in Unable to join the others at the dance because of my sprained ankle, I went to a movie.
  • peripheral vision — all that is visible to the eye outside the central area of focus; side vision.
  • permanent address — a fixed address
  • pernicious anemia — Pernicious anemia is a very severe blood disease.
  • perpetual spinach — a variety of spinach that keeps producing edible leaves
  • persistent memory — non-volatile storage
  • persona non grata — a person who is not welcome: He has become persona non grata in our club since his angry outburst.
  • personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
  • personal distance — personal space.
  • personal equation — the tendency to personal bias that accounts for variation in interpretation or approach and for which allowance must be made.
  • personal property — an estate or property consisting of movable articles both corporeal, as furniture or jewelry, or incorporeal, as stocks or bonds (distinguished from real property).
  • personality clash — friction between two people who have different personalities or points of view
  • personnel carrier — a vehicle used for transporting troops
  • personnel manager — head of Human Resources department
  • personnel officer — a worker responsible for recruiting employees and dealing with matters relating to them
  • perspicaciousness — having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning: to exhibit perspicacious judgment.
  • perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
  • peterloo massacre — an incident at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, in 1819 in which a radical meeting was broken up by a cavalry charge, resulting in about 500 injuries and 11 deaths
  • petit bourgeoisie — The petit bourgeoisie are people in the lower middle class.
  • petite bourgeoise — a woman who belongs to the petite bourgeoisie.
  • petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
  • petty bourgeoisie — the section of the middle class with the lowest social status, generally composed of shopkeepers, lower clerical staff, etc
  • 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.
  • phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
  • philosopher kings — the Platonic ideal of a ruler, philosophically trained and enlightened.
  • phlebotomus fever — sandfly fever.
  • photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
  • photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
  • phototherapeutics — the branch of therapeutics that deals with the curative use of light rays.
  • physical exercise — movements and activities done to keep your body healthy or make it stronger
  • physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
  • physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
  • pick the eyes out — to select the best parts or pieces (of)
  • picture messaging — Picture messaging is the sending of photographs or pictures from one mobile phone to another.
  • piece of business — business (def 10).
  • pillar-and-breast — room-and-pillar.
  • pillion passenger — a person who travels in a seat or place behind the rider of a motorcycle, scooter, horse, etc
  • pinckney's treaty — an agreement in 1795 between Spain and the U.S. by which Spain recognized the 31st parallel as the southern boundary of the U.S. and permitted free navigation of the Mississippi to American ships.
  • pincushion flower — scabious2 (def 1).
  • pink-footed goose — a Eurasian goose, Anser brachyrhynchus, having a reddish-brown head, pink legs, and a pink band on its black beak
  • pioneering spirit — a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things
  • pitot-static tube — a device combining a Pitot tube with a static tube: used to measure airspeed.
  • plastic explosive — a puttylike substance that contains an explosive charge, and is detonated by fuse or by remote control: used especially by terrorists and in guerrilla warfare.
  • plateau's problem — the problem in the calculus of variations of finding the surface with the least area bounded by a given closed curve in space.
  • play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
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