20-letter words containing p, u, t
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- group of twenty-four — a group of twenty-four rich and industrialized countries of the world, whose heads of government meet regularly to coordinate the position of developing countries on monetary and development issues
- group representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of interests rather than by geographical location.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- happy hunting ground — the North American Indian heaven, conceived of as a paradise of hunting and feasting for warriors and hunters.
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
- hipparchus satellite — an astronometric satellite launched in 1989 by the European Space Agency that measured the position, proper motion, and brightness of 118 218 stars down to 12th magnitude and the magnitude and colour of a million stars down to 10th magnitude
- hire-purchase system — a system of payment for a commodity in regular installments while using it.
- hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
- hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
- houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
- human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- ignotum per ignotius — an explanation that is obscurer than the thing to be explained
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in (or out of) play — in (or not in) the condition for continuing play
- in the lap of luxury — If you say that someone lives in the lap of luxury, you mean that they live in conditions of great comfort and wealth.
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- industrial espionage — the stealing of technological or commercial research data, blueprints, plans, etc., as by a person in the hire of a competing company.
- inertial upper stage — a U.S. two-stage, solid-propellant rocket used to boost a relatively heavy spacecraft from a low earth orbit into a planetary trajectory or an elliptical transfer orbit. Abbreviation: IUS.
- infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
- inland revenue stamp — a certificate issued by the Inland Revenue to acknowledge payment of tax
- instruction prefetch — (architecture) A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
- join-the-dots puzzle — a puzzle requiring you to connect a series of dots by drawing lines between them. If the dots are correctly connected, the result is a picture
- juno and the paycock — a play (1924) by Sean O'Casey.
- justice of the peace — a local public officer, usually having jurisdiction to try and determine minor civil and criminal cases and to hold preliminary examinations of persons accused of more serious crimes, and having authority to administer oaths, solemnize marriages, etc.
- keep your mouth shut — If you keep your mouth shut about something, you do not talk about it, especially because it is a secret.
- kingston upon thames — a borough of Greater London, England.
- knockout competition — used to describe a competition in which competitors are eliminated progressively
- kruger national park — a wildlife sanctuary in NE South Africa: the world's largest game reserve. Area: over 21 700 sq km (8400 sq miles)
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- language development — the development verbal communication skills in children
- law of superposition — Geology. a basic law of geochronology, stating that in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- light the touchpaper — to do something that will cause much anger or excitement
- lighthouse coffeepot — a coffeepot of the late 17th and 18th centuries, having a tapering, circular body with a domed lid.
- like death warmed up — very ill
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- liquidity preference — (in Keynesian economics) the degree of individual preference for cash over less liquid assets.
- lump in one's throat — the passage from the mouth to the stomach or to the lungs, including the pharynx, esophagus, larynx, and trachea.
- lymphogranulomatosis — widespread infectious granuloma of the lymphatic system.
- member of the public — a member of the general population
- military superiority — the power, strength, or numbers of armed forces of a country viewed as an advantage over another country
- mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
- multipart stationery — continuous stationery comprising two or more sheets, either carbonless or with carbon paper between the sheets
- multiple inheritance — (programming) In object-oriented programming, the possibility that a class may have more than one direct superclass in the class hierarchy. The opposite is single inheritance.
- multiple personality — a rare disorder in which an individual displays several functionally dissociated personalities, each of a complexity comparable to that of a normal individual.