12-letter words containing p, w, a
- piercing saw — a small, fine-gauge saw blade with uniformly spaced, angled teeth, inserted in a jeweler's saw frame and used to cut precious metal and such soft materials as ivory and shell.
- piltdown man — a hypothetical early modern human, assigned to the genus Eoanthropus, whose existence was inferred from skull fragments that were allegedly found at Piltdown, England, in 1912 but were exposed as fraudulent through chemical analysis in 1953.
- pine warbler — a warbler, Dendroica pinus, inhabiting pine forests of the southeastern U.S.
- pkware, inc. — (company, compression) The company, founded by Phil Katz in 1986, which produces the PKZIP and PKUNZIP compression tools and libraries for many platforms. Address: 201 E. Pittsburgh Ave., Suite 400, Milwaukee, WI 53204 USA
- planck's law — the law that energy associated with electromagnetic radiation, as light, is composed of discrete quanta of energy, each quantum equal to Planck's constant times the corresponding frequency of the radiation: the fundamental law of quantum mechanics.
- planet wheel — any of the gears in an epicyclic train surrounding and engaging with the sun gear.
- plastic flow — deformation of a material that remains rigid under stresses of less than a certain intensity but that behaves under severer stresses approximately as a Newtonian fluid.
- plastic wrap — a very thin, transparent sheet of plastic, usually packaged in rolls and often having the ability to cling to other substances, used especially to wrap and store food and for microwave cooking.
- plate warmer — a device for warming plates
- pleased with — satisfied or content with
- polar wander — the movement of the earth's magnetic poles with respect to the geographic poles
- polish wheat — a wheat, Triticum polonicum, grown chiefly in S Europe, N Africa, and Turkestan.
- poll watcher — a representative of a political party or of an organization running a candidate who is assigned to the polls on an election day to watch for violations of the laws that regulate voting, campaigning, etc.
- positive law — customary law or law enacted by governmental authority (as distinguished from natural law).
- post-weaning — to accustom (a child or young animal) to food other than its mother's milk; cause to lose the need to suckle or turn to the mother for food.
- postcardware — Shareware that borders on freeware, in that the author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to real estate "sales" in which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.)
- pot-walloper — (in some boroughs before the Reform Bill of 1832) a man who qualified as a householder, and therefore a voter, by virtue of ownership of his own fireplace at which to boil pots.
- powder flask — a small flask of gunpowder formerly carried by soldiers and hunters.
- powder paper — Pharmacology. charta (def 2).
- power assist — a procedure for supplementing or replacing the manual effort needed to operate a device or system, often by hydraulic, electrical, or mechanical means.
- power factor — (in an electrical circuit) the ratio of the power dissipated to the product of the input volts times amps
- power hammer — a type of mechanical hammer operated by compressed air and used by blacksmiths, metalworkers, and manufacturers
- power vacuum — a situation when a government has no identifiable central authority
- power-stream — to stream and watch (multiple videos, episodes of a TV show, etc.) in one sitting or over a short period of time.
- powerboating — a boat propelled by mechanical power.
- powerwalking — a form of exercise that involves rapid walking with arms bent and swinging naturally.
- prairie fowl — prairie chicken.
- prairie wolf — coyote (def 1).
- praiseworthy — deserving of praise; laudable: a praiseworthy motive.
- prayer shawl — a tallith.
- prayer wheel — a wheel or cylinder inscribed with or containing prayers, used chiefly by Buddhists of Tibet.
- primary wall — the wall of a plant cell that is formed first around the protoplast, composed of cellulose microfibrils aligned at all angles and held together by hydrogen bonds.
- primary wave — Seismology. P wave.
- private view — a preview, esp of an art exhibition, for specially invited guests
- property law — the branch of law dealing with issues relating to land and houses
- punxsutawney — a town in central Pennsylvania: Groundhog Day celebration.
- push forward — keep advancing
- road sweeper — a person who sweeps roads
- sage sparrow — a small gray finch, Amphispiza belli, of dry, brushy areas of western North America.
- saw palmetto — a shrublike palmetto, Serenoa repens, of the palm family, native to the southern U.S., having green or blue leafstalks set with spiny teeth.
- scapegallows — a criminal who escapes death by hanging or the gallows
- school prawn — a common olive-green prawn, Metapenaeus macleayi
- sepak takraw — a game originating in South Asia in which two teams kick a ball back and forth over a net
- shadow price — the calculated price of a good or service for which no market price exists
- shadowgraphy — the production of a shadowgraph
- sharp-witted — having or showing mental acuity; intellectually discerning; acute.
- shop steward — commerce: union rep
- sleepwalking — an act of sleepwalking; somnambulation.
- sloop of war — (formerly) a sailing or steam naval vessel having cannons on only one deck.
- snow leopard — a long-haired, leopardlike feline, Panthera (Uncia) uncia, of mountain ranges of central Asia, having a relatively small head and a thick, creamy-gray coat with rosette spots: an endangered species.