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18-letter words containing s, i, e, g, p

  • petite bourgeoisie — the portion of the bourgeoisie having the least wealth and lowest social status; the lower middle class.
  • phase-shift keying — (communications)   (PSK) A digital modulation scheme that conveys data by changing the phase of a carrier wave. The data can either determine the absolute phase relative to the unmodulated carrier or reference signal ("coherent phase-shift keying", CPSK) or the change in phase ("differential phase-shift keying", DPSK). The number of different phases used determines the amount of data that can be transmitted in each cycle. Each cycle can be considered to constitute one "symbol", e.g. with two possible phases, each cycle carries one bit. The more phases that are used, the less tollerant to noise the transmissions becomes. Alternatives to PSK are amplitude-shift keying (ASK) and frequency-shift keying (FSK).
  • photochemical smog — air pollution containing ozone and other reactive chemical compounds formed by the action of sunlight on nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, especially those in automobile exhaust.
  • photomorphogenesis — plant development that is controlled by light.
  • physical geography — the branch of geography concerned with natural features and phenomena of the earth's surface, as landforms, drainage features, climates, soils, and vegetation.
  • pilgrim's progress — an allegory (1678) by John Bunyan.
  • pilotless ignition — a system for igniting a gas burner, as in a gas range, furnace, or boiler, without the use of a pilot light.
  • pine tree shilling — a silver coin minted in Massachusetts in the mid to late 17th century, named for the pine tree within a circle shown on the obverse side.
  • plains grasshopper — a large, destructive short-horned grasshopper, Brachystola magna, of the western U.S., marked by pinkish hind wings.
  • plate-glass window — a window that has glass which has been formed by rolling
  • play silly buggers — to fool around and waste time
  • plight one's troth — to make a promise of marriage
  • point set topology — topology (def 2).
  • population figures — population totals; statistics relating to the size of populations
  • portuguese guinean — of or relating to Portuguese Guinea, a former name for Guinea-Bissau, or its inhabitants
  • positively charged — having a positive charge
  • pre-filled syringe — A pre-filled syringe is a disposable syringe that is supplied already loaded with the substance to be injected.
  • premiere screening — the first screening of a film at a cinema, etc
  • prerelease showing — a showing of a film before it goes on general release
  • prestidigitization — /pres`t*-di"j*-ti:-zay"sh*n/ 1. A term coined by Daniel Klein <[email protected]> for the act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
  • process scheduling — multitasking
  • procrustean string — (programming)   A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
  • progressive coding — (graphics, file format, algorithm)   (Or "interlacing") An aspect of a graphics storage format or transmission algorithm that treats bitmap image data non-sequentially in such a way that later data adds progressively greater resolution to an already full-size image. This contrasts with sequential coding. Progressive coding is useful when an image is being sent across a slow communications channel, such as the Internet, as the low-resolution image may be sufficient to allow the user to decide not to wait for the rest of the file to be received. In an interlaced GIF89 image, the pixels in a row are stored sequentially but the rows are stored in interlaced order, e.g. 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 6, 8, 10, 14, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Each vertical scan adds rows in the middle of the gaps left by the previous one. Interlacing is also supported by other formats. JPEG supports a functionally similar concept known as Progressive JPEG. [How does the algorithm differ?] See also progressive/sequential coding.
  • progressive dinner — a dinner party in which each successive course is prepared and eaten at the residence of a different participant.
  • proprietary rights — rights of ownership
  • psychotechnologist — a specialist in psychotechnology
  • ptomaine poisoning — (erroneously) food poisoning thought to be caused by ptomaine.
  • punishment beating — a form of corporal punishment carried out by a paramilitary organization on a member of another sectarian organization, usually in Northern Ireland
  • purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
  • registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
  • registration plate — a plate mounted on the front and back of a motor vehicle bearing the registration number
  • regular expression — 1.   (text, operating system)   (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, and awk and editors such as vi and Emacs. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except newline; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "Kleene star") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \< matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE{M} matches M occurences of RE. RE{M,} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE{M,N} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\{M\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" operators for writing REs, including the common // form and less common ??. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). 2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.
  • reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
  • sampling equipment — Sampling equipment is equipment which is used to remove small amounts of something for analysis and monitoring.
  • sampling frequency — sample rate
  • scripting language — a language that is used to write scripts, or executable sections of code that automate tasks.
  • seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
  • self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
  • self-deprecatingly — in a self-deprecating manner
  • self-disparagement — the act of disparaging.
  • self-tapping screw — a screw designed to tap its corresponding female thread as it is driven.
  • shape-note singing — a traditional style of a capella singing using shape-note notation.
  • shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
  • shipping documents — documents relating to the sending of a shipment of goods, for example containing details of contents, weight, value etc.
  • shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
  • shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
  • sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
  • sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
  • slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
  • something to spare — a surplus of something
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