19-letter words containing s, e, r, i, c
- orthopaedic surgery — surgery concerned with disorders of the spine and joints and the repair of deformities of these parts
- palisade parenchyma — the upper layer of ground tissue in a leaf, consisting of elongated cells beneath and perpendicular to the upper epidermis and constituting the primary area of photosynthesis.
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
- parachute spinnaker — a very large spinnaker used on a racing yacht.
- parallactic ellipse — the apparent ellipse, as seen against the background of more distant stars, described annually by a nearby star because of the earth's orbital motion around the sun. Compare parallax (def 2).
- parallel processing — extending in the same direction, equidistant at all points, and never converging or diverging: parallel rows of trees.
- parasympathomimetic — having an effect similar to that produced when the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated
- particle dispersoid — A particle dispersoid is a suspension of solid particles in a gas.
- particle kinematics — Particle kinematics is the study of the movement of particles, without considering the forces that cause this movement.
- particle separation — a rule that moves the particle of a phrasal verb, thus deriving a sentence like He looked the answer up from a structure that also underlies He looked up the answer
- pastoral counseling — the use of psychotherapeutic techniques by trained members of the clergy to assist parishioners who seek help for personal or emotional problems.
- pedestrian crossing — place to cross road
- pedestrian precinct — A pedestrian precinct is a street or part of a town where vehicles are not allowed.
- percussion drilling — Percussion drilling is a drilling method which involves lifting and dropping heavy tools to break rock, and uses steel casing tubes to stop the borehole from collapsing.
- perfect progressive — a verb form including the auxiliary have followed by been and a present participle, noting the continuation of an activity or event, its incompleteness or interruption, and its connection to the temporal point of reference, as in I've been waiting for over an hour, They had been talking about her before she came into the room, or In July, he will have been living here for two years.
- performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
- peroxysulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- persecution complex — an acute irrational fear that other people are plotting one's downfall and that they are responsible for one's failures
- photoreconnaissance — reconnaissance using aerial photography.
- physical addressing — (networking) The low level addressing scheme used on Ethernet. The 48-bit destination Ethernet address in a packet is compared with the receiving node's Ethernet address. Compare IP address.
- physical impairment — A physical impairment is a condition in which a part of a person's body is damaged or is not working properly.
- physically impaired — with reduced or weakened physical capacity
- piece de resistance — the principal dish of a meal.
- pillars of hercules — the two promontories at the E end of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Jebel Musa on the African side; according to legend, formed by Hercules
- pirates of penzance — an operetta (1879) by Sir William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
- pistachio ice cream — ice cream flavoured with pistachios
- plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- pneumogastric nerve — the vagus nerve.
- police headquarters — building where police are stationed
- post office problem — (algorithm) Given a set of points (in N dimensions), find another point which minimises the sum of the distances from that point to each of the others.
- post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
- potassium carbonate — a white, granular, water-soluble powder, K 2 CO 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of soap, glass, and potassium salts.
- prescription charge — a charge, set by the government, to be paid by a patient for medicines
- presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
- pretty as a picture — girl: sweetly attractive
- prick up one's ears — a puncture made by a needle, thorn, or the like.
- priority scheduling — (operating system) Processes scheduling in which the scheduler selects tasks to run based on their priority as opposed to, say, a simple round-robin. Priorities may be static or dynamic. Static priorities are assigned at the time of creation, while dynamic priorities are based on the processes' behaviour while in the system. For example, the scheduler may favour I/O-intensive tasks so that expensive requests can be issued as early as possible. A danger of priority scheduling is starvation, in which processes with lower priorities are not given the opportunity to run. In order to avoid starvation, in preemptive scheduling, the priority of a process is gradually reduced while it is running. Eventually, the priority of the running process will no longer be the highest, and the next process will start running. This method is called aging.
- prismatic telescope — a telescope having an eyepiece at the side or top equipped with a reflecting prism, used for taking sights at steep angles.
- private first class — a soldier ranking above a private and below a corporal or specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army, and above a private and below a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
- private prosecution — a prosecution started by a private individual rather than by the police
- process engineering — the branch of engineering concerned with industrial processes, esp continuous ones, such as the production of petrochemicals
- proctosigmoidoscope — sigmoidoscope.
- professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
- professional school — a postgraduate school or college which trains students for a particular profession
- programmer's switch — (hardware) A button on the front of some Apple Macintosh computers which, when pressed, causes a command line prompt to appear. This gives access to the built-in mini-debugger, which has commands to dump memory, return to the application that was broken out, and others. A more sophisticated debugger must be installed in order to inspect breakpoints, etc.
- promotion prospects — the chances or prospects an employee has for promotion or for gaining a better position, often in the same company
- promotions director — someone in charge of encouraging the sale of (a product) by advertising or securing financial support
- pseudo-aristocratic — of or relating to government by an aristocracy.
- pseudo-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- pseudo-conservative — disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.