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19-letter words containing p, t, e

  • as things/people go — You use expressions like as things go or as children go when you are describing one person or thing and comparing them with others of the same kind.
  • assistant professor — An assistant professor is a college teacher who ranks above an instructor but below an associate professor.
  • associate professor — An associate professor is a college teacher who ranks above an assistant professor but below a professor.
  • at one's fingertips — readily available and within one's mental grasp
  • atmospheric braking — a technique of reentry in which the vehicle is maneuvered in the upper atmosphere so as to lose velocity by utilizing drag without overheating.
  • attempt the life of — to try to kill
  • audio response unit — a device that enables a computer to give a spoken response by generating sounds similar to human speech.
  • autoerotic asphyxia — asphyxia caused by intentionally strangling oneself while masturbating in order to intensify the orgasm through reduced oxygen flow to the brain.
  • backward compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophyll — a pale blue-gray form of chlorophyll that is unique to the photosynthetic but anaerobic purple bacteria.
  • balance of payments — A country's balance of payments is the difference, over a period of time, between the payments it makes to other countries for imports and the payments it receives from other countries for exports.
  • banker's acceptance — a draft or bill of exchange drawn on a bank and accepted by it
  • bankruptcy petition — an official request for protection under bankruptcy laws, which initiates bankruptcy proceedings
  • barometric pressure — atmospheric pressure as indicated by a barometer
  • be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
  • be up to one's neck — the part of the body of an animal or human being that connects the head and the trunk.
  • beauty preparations — the cosmetics, creams etc used to improve someone's beauty
  • benefit performance — a theatrical or musical performance in aid of charity
  • beta-naphthyl group — See under naphthyl.
  • binomial experiment — an experiment consisting of a fixed number of independent trials each with two possible outcomes, success and failure, and the same probability of success. The probability of a given number of successes is described by a binominal distribution
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • black carpenter ant — a large, black ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, that lives in damp wood in nature or in houses, where it can cause considerable damage by boring or tunneling.
  • black carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
  • blackstrap molasses — the molasses remaining after the maximum quantity of sugar has been extracted from the raw material
  • blast from the past — You can use a blast from the past as a light-hearted way of referring to something such as an old song or fashion that you hear or notice again, and which reminds you of an earlier time.
  • blot one's copybook — to spoil one's reputation by making a mistake, offending against social customs, etc
  • blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
  • box-office receipts — the money earned from ticket sales for a film or play
  • breach of the peace — A breach of the peace is noisy or violent behaviour in a public place which is illegal because it disturbs other people.
  • breathing apparatus — an apparatus, usually consisting of tanks of air or oxygen and a mouthpiece, that enables the wearer to breath in difficult conditions such as a smoke-filled building
  • brightline spectrum — the spectrum of an incandescent substance appearing on a spectrogram as one or more bright lines against a dark background.
  • bring into the open — to make evident or public
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • by one's bootstraps — by one's own efforts; unaided
  • calculate a premium — If you calculate a premium, you decide how much a policyholder has to pay for insurance cover.
  • camouflage passport — a passport from a non-existent country intended to conceal the bearer's true nationality (from hijackers, kidnappers, etc)
  • cannot help oneself — to be the victim of circumstances, a habit, etc.
  • canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
  • capacitive coupling — the connection of two or more circuits by means of a capacitor.
  • capacity attendance — a situation when a venue for an event is as full as it can be
  • cape-disappointment — Cape, a cape in SW Washington state, projecting into the Pacific Ocean on the N of the mouth of the Columbia River.
  • capital expenditure — expenditure on acquisitions of or improvements to fixed assets
  • captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
  • carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
  • caterpillar tractor — a tractor powered by a Caterpillar track
  • cathodic protection — a technique for protecting metal structures, such as steel ships and pipelines, from electrolytic corrosion by making the structure the cathode in a cell, either by applying an electromotive force directly or by putting it into contact with a more electropositive metal
  • chain-reacting pile — nuclear reactor
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • champagne lifestyle — a lifestyle involving the enjoyment of luxuries and expensive pleasures
  • champagne socialist — a professed socialist who enjoys an extravagant lifestyle
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