17-letter words containing p, u, l, e
- hyperintellectual — appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits.
- iberian peninsula — Also called Iberian Peninsula. a peninsula in SW Europe, comprising Spain and Portugal.
- ice-cream parlour — a place where people go to eat ice cream
- illegal procedure — a penalty assessed against the offensive team for a technical rules violation, as in assuming an illegal formation.
- impossible figure — a picture of an object that at first sight looks three-dimensional but cannot be a two-dimensional projection of a real three-dimensional object, for example a picture of a staircase that re-enters itself while appearing to ascend continuously
- in the public eye — featured prominently in the media
- inclusion complex — a solid solution in which molecules of one compound occupy places in the crystal lattice of another compound. Compare adduct (def 2).
- influence peddler — a person who arranges to obtain favors, as government contracts, from high officials on behalf of others for a fee.
- insulin-dependent — of or relating to the type of diabetes that mainly affects young people
- insupportableness — The state of being insupportable; insufferableness.
- interrupt handler — (software) A routine which is executed when an interrupt occurs. Interrupt handlers typically deal with low-level events in the hardware of a computer system such as a character arriving at a serial port or a tick of a real-time clock. Special care is required when writing an interrupt handler to ensure that either the interrupt which triggered the handler's execution is masked out (inhibitted) until the handler exits, or the handler is re-entrant so that multiple concurrent invocations will not interfere with each other. If interrupts are masked then the handler must execute as quickly as possible so that important events are not missed. This is often arranged by splitting the processing associated with the event into "upper" and "lower" halves. The lower part is the interrupt handler which masks out further interrupts as required, checks that the appropriate event has occurred (this may be necessary if several events share the same interrupt), services the interrupt, e.g. by reading a character from a UART and writing it to a queue, and re-enabling interrupts. The upper half executes as part of a user process. It waits until the interrupt handler has run. Normally the operating system is responsible for reactivating a process which is waiting for some low-level event. It detects this by a shared flag or by inspecting a shared queue or by some other synchronisation mechanism. It is important that the upper and lower halves do not interfere if an interrupt occurs during the execution of upper half code. This is usually ensured by disabling interrupts during critical sections of code such as removing a character from a queue.
- irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
- jumping-off place — a place for use as a starting point: Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
- jurisprudentially — In terms of jurisprudence.
- karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
- keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
- l'hospital's rule — the theorem that for the quotient of two functions satisfying certain conditions on a given closed interval, each having infinite limit or zero as limit at a given point, the limit of the quotient at the given point is equal to the limit of the quotient of the derivatives of each function.
- la perouse strait — a strait between S Sakhalin Island, Russia and N Hokkaido Island, Japan connecting the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. 25 miles (40 km) wide.
- language planning — the development of policies or programs designed to direct or change language use, as through the establishment of an official language, the standardization or modernization of a language, or the development or alteration of a writing system.
- least upper bound — an upper bound that is less than or equal to all the upper bounds of a particular set. 3 is the least upper bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbr.: lub.
- leizhou peninsula — a peninsula of SE China, in SW Guangdong province, separated from Hainan Island by Hainan Strait
- lighthouse keeper — a person who mans a lighthouse and makes sure that the light is working properly
- ligurian republic — the republic in NW Italy set up by Napoleon in 1797, incorporated into France in 1805, and united with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.
- liquid petrolatum — mineral oil.
- liquid propellant — a rocket propellant in liquid form.
- lumpenproletariat — the lowest level of the proletariat comprising unskilled workers, vagrants, and criminals and characterized by a lack of class identification and solidarity.
- malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
- manual typewriter — a keyboard machine, operated entirely by hand, for writing mechanically in characters resembling print
- maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
- medical procedure — A medical procedure is a medical treatment or operation.
- mercuric sulphide — a compound of mercury, usually existing as a black solid (metacinnabarite) or a red solid (cinnabar or vermilion), which is used as a pigment. Formula: HgS
- methylidyne group — the trivalent group ≡CH.
- microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
- mounted policeman — policemen who patrol on horseback
- multiple cropping — the use of the same field for two or more crops, whether of the same or of different kinds, successively during a single year.
- multiple exposure — the filming of more than one scene in a single frame
- multiple integral — an integral in which the integrand involves a function of more than one variable and which requires for evaluation repetition of the integration process.
- multiple neuritis — polyneuritis.
- multiple-unit car — a self-propelled railroad car, generally used in commuting service, equipped so that a train of such cars can be operated from any one of them.
- multiplex printer — (hardware) A duplex circuit using time-division multiplexing to provide multiple duplex channels over one wire. For example, channels A, B, C, and D could be used for simultaneous transmission in both directions.
- multiplier effect — the effect of government spending on national income
- multipotentiality — The capacity to develop in multiple ways; the state of having multiple potentialities.
- muscle dysmorphia — a mental disorder primarily affecting males, characterized by obsessions about a perceived lack of muscularity, leading to compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, etc. Compare body dysmorphic disorder.
- net present value — an assessment of the long-term profitability of a project made by adding together all the revenue it can be expected to achieve over its whole life and deducting all the costs involved, discounting both future costs and revenue at an appropriate rate
- neuropathological — (medicine) Of, pertaining to, or arising from neuropathology, the pathology of nerve tissue.
- neuropharmacology — the branch of pharmacology concerned with the effects of drugs on the nervous system.
- neurophysiologist — the branch of physiology dealing with the functions of the nervous system.
- neuropsychologist — A neurologist or psychologist whose speciality is neuropsychology.
- oil of turpentine — a colorless, flammable, volatile essential oil having a penetrating odor and a pungent, bitter taste, obtained from turpentine oleoresin by distillation: used in paints and varnishes, and in medicine as a carminative, vermifuge, expectorant, rubefacient, and, formerly, as a diuretic.
- olympic peninsula — a large peninsula of W Washington