19-letter words containing s, i, d, o
- pistol-handle knife — a table knife, especially of the 18th century, having a slightly curved handle resembling the grip of a flintlock pistol.
- 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.
- police headquarters — building where police are stationed
- polyphosphoric acid — any one of a series of oxyacids of phosphorus with the general formula Hn+2PnO3n+1. The first member is pyrophosphoric acid (n = 2) and the series includes the highly polymeric metaphosphoric acid. The higher acids exist in an equilibrium mixture
- post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
- post-polio syndrome — Pathology. muscle weakness occurring several decades after recovery from a polio infection, caused by fatiguing of collateral nerve axons developed during physical rehabilitation.
- postage and packing — the cost of packing and mailing an item bought by post
- potassium hydroxide — a white, deliquescent, water-soluble solid, KOH, usually in the form of lumps, sticks, or pellets, that upon solution in water generates heat: used chiefly in the manufacture of soap, as a laboratory reagent, and as a caustic.
- primitive methodist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Primitive Methodist Church) founded in England in 1812 and later established in the U.S., characterized by its adherence to the basic doctrines, principles, and practices taught by John Wesley.
- printing discussion — [XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to all.
- 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.
- proctosigmoidoscope — sigmoidoscope.
- proctosigmoidoscopy — sigmoidoscopy.
- professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
- profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
- progressive judaism — Reform Judaism.
- 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.
- pseudo-experimental — pertaining to, derived from, or founded on experiment: an experimental science.
- pseudo-hieroglyphic — noting or pertaining to a script dating from the second millennium b.c. that appears to be syllabic and to represent the Phoenician language and that is inscribed on objects found at Byblos.
- pseudo-intellectual — a person exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
- pseudo-intransitive — denoting an occurrence of a normally transitive verb in which a direct object is not explicitly stated or forms the subject of the sentence, as in Margaret is cooking or these apples cook well
- pseudo-professional — following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
- pseudohermaphrodite — an individual having internal reproductive organs of one sex and external sexual characteristics resembling those of the other sex or being ambiguous in nature. Compare hermaphrodite (def 1).
- pseudopsychological — of or relating to psychology.
- psychoendocrinology — the study of the relationship between the endocrine system and various symptoms or types of mental illness.
- pyrophosphoric acid — a crystalline, water-soluble powder, H 4 P 2 O 7 , formed by the union of one molecule of phosphorus pentoxide with two molecules of water.
- radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
- reactive depression — depression occurring in response to some situational stress, as loss of one's job.
- recording secretary — an officer charged with keeping the minutes of meetings and responsible for the records.
- regular icosahedron — an icosahedron in which each of the faces is an equilateral triangle
- reindustrialization — the revitalization of an industry or industrial society through government aid and tax incentives, modernization of factories and machinery, etc.
- relational database — an electronic database comprising multiple files of related information, usually stored in tables of rows (records) and columns (fields), and allowing a link to be established between separate files that have a matching field, as a column of invoice numbers, so that the two files can be queried simultaneously by the user.
- religious education — religion as school subject
- removable hard disk — (storage) A type of magnetic disk, or possibly magneto-optical disk which is not permanently attached to the disk drive (not a fixed disk) but which can be taken out and replaced, allowing many disks to be used in the same drive. The term "removable disk" would seem to be applicable to floppy disks but is generally reserved for hard disks in suitable cartridges such as those made by Syquest, Iomega and others. Removable disk packs were common on minicomputers such as the PDP-11 in use in the 1970s except that the drives were the size of washing machines and the disk packs as big as car wheels. Removable disks became popular on microcomputers in the 1990s as a cheap way of expanding disk space, transporting large amounts of data between computers and storing backups. Large, cheap fixed hard disks and USB memory sticks have made removable disks less attractive.
- reserved occupation — in time of war, an occupation from which one will not be called up for military service
- resonance radiation — radiation emitted by an atom or molecule, having the same frequency as that of an incident particle, as a photon, and usually involving a transition to the lowest energy level of the atom or molecule.
- rhodesian ridgeback — a large short-haired breed of dog characterized by a ridge of hair growing along the back in the opposite direction to the rest of the coat. It was originally a hunting dog from South Africa
- ride roughshod over — shod with horseshoes having projecting nails or points.
- saber-toothed tiger — any of several extinct members of the cat family Felidae from the Oligocene to Pleistocene Epochs, having greatly elongated, saberlike upper canine teeth.
- sabre-toothed tiger — any of various extinct Tertiary felines of the genus Smilodon and related genera, with long curved upper canine teeth
- saccharolactic acid — mucic acid.
- saddle-billed stork — a large stork, Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis, of West Africa, having a white and black body and a long, red and black bill.
- samoa standard time — a standard time used in the zone which includes American Samoa, corresponding to the mean solar time of the 165th meridian west of Greenwich, England: it is eleven hours behind Greenwich time
- san bernardino pass — a pass over the Lepontine Alps in SE Switzerland. Highest point: 2062 m (6766 ft)
- san salvador island — an island in the central Bahamas: the first land in the New World seen by Christopher Columbus (1492). Area: 156 sq km (60 sq miles)
- sandwich generation — the generation of people still raising their children while having to care for their aging parents.
- santiago del estero — a city in N Argentina.