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21-letter words containing r, i

  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • performance indicator — a quantitative or qualitative measurement, or any other criterion, by which the performance, efficiency, achievement, etc of a person or organization can be assessed, often by comparison with an agreed standard or target
  • performance-enhancing — noting or relating to a drug or other substance used to improve one's performance in a sport or other activity requiring strength, stamina, etc.: The use of performance-enhancing steroids by athletes is banned.
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • persistence of memory — a painting (1931) by Salvador Dali.
  • persistence of vision — the retention of a visual image for a short period of time after the removal of the stimulus that produced it: the phenomenon that produces the illusion of movement when viewing motion pictures.
  • personality inventory — a questionnaire designed to measure personality types or characteristics.
  • personalized medicine — an approach to the practice of medicine that uses information about a patient’s unique genetic makeup and environment to customize the patient's medical care to fit his or her individual requirements.
  • phenarsazine chloride — adamsite.
  • philadelphia scrapple — a superior variety of scrapple made with pork shoulder and other cuts of pork rather than with pork scraps.
  • phillips screw-driver — a screw head having two partial slots crossed at right angles, driven by a special screwdriver (Phillips screwdriver)
  • photoelectric current — photocurrent.
  • physical anthropology — the branch of anthropology dealing with the evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology, using mensurational and descriptive techniques.
  • pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
  • picture quality scale — (graphics)   (PQS) A system for rating image quality based upon features of images that affect their perception by the human eye, rather than the traditional signal-to-noise ratio which examines differences for every single pixel.
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • piezoelectric ceramic — any ceramic that exhibits piezoelectric properties.
  • piezoelectric crystal — a crystal, such as quartz, that produces a potential difference across its opposite faces when under mechanical stress
  • pincushion distortion — a distortion produced by a lens in which the magnification increases toward the edge of the field.
  • pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
  • place of articulation — the location at which two speech organs approach or come together in producing a speech sound, as in the contact of the tongue and the teeth to form a dental sound. Also called point of articulation. Compare articulator (def 2).
  • plate glass insurance — Plate glass insurance is insurance coverage against damage to or breakage of large panes of glass such as shop windows.
  • play russian roulette — take a foolish risk
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • point of articulation — place of articulation.
  • polarizing microscope — a microscope that utilizes polarized light to reveal detail in an object, used especially to study crystalline and fibrous structures.
  • political correctness — Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability.
  • politically incorrect — not politically correct; potentially offensive to a particular group of people: politically incorrect jokes.
  • polygenic inheritance — the heredity of complex characters that are determined by a large number of genes, each one usually having a relatively small effect.
  • pomp and circumstance — ceremony
  • poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
  • populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
  • portrait photographer — a photographer who specializes in portraits
  • positive prescription — the uninterrupted possession of property over a stated period of time, after which a right or title is acquired
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • postpartum depression — Postpartum depression is a mental state involving feelings of anxiety and sudden mood swings which some women experience after they have given birth.
  • potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
  • poweropen association — An independent body established to promote, and test conformance with, the PowerOpen Environment (POE).
  • poweropen environment — (operating system)   (POE) A definition containing API and ABI specifications based on the PowerPC architecture. It is not an operating system. The presence of the ABI specification in the POE distinguishes it from other open systems (POSIX, XPG4, etc.) since it allows platform independent binary compatibility which is otherwise typically limited to particular hardware. The POE is an open standard, derived from AIX and conforming to industry open standards including POSIX, XPG4 and Motif. The POE specification will be publicly available to anyone wishing to produce either application programs or hardware platforms. The PowerOpen Association will provide the necessary conformance testing and POE branding. The POE is hardware bus independent. System implementations can range from laptop computers to supercomputers. It requires a multi-user, multitasking operating system. It provides networking support, an X Window System extension, a Macintosh Application Services extension and Motif. It is conformance tested and certified by an independent party (the PowerOpen Association). The POE specification is targeted for availability in the first quarter of 1994. The PowerOpen Association will soon have some of the information material available on-line.
  • powersoft corporation — (company)   A leading vendor of client/server application development tools. In February 1994, Watcom became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Powersoft Corporation which merged with Sybase on 13 February 1995. In April 1995, the new company is the fastest growing top-ten software company and the seventh largest software company in the world. Headquarters: Concord, Massachusetts, USA.
  • prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
  • preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
  • precision engineering — design of complex and specialized machines
  • preexisting condition — A preexisting condition is a medical condition already suffered by a proposer before the starting date of an insurance policy.
  • prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
  • premature ejaculation — a male psychosexual disorder in which ejaculation occurs soon after the commencement of sexual intercourse.
  • premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
  • president pro tempore — a senator, usually a senior member of the majority party, who is chosen to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president.
  • price competitiveness — pricing goods or services so that they are competitive with the prices of other companies
  • primary sex character — any of the body structures directly concerned in reproduction, as the testes, ovaries, and external genitalia.
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