15-letter words containing s, o, l, e, p, a
- olbers' paradox — the paradox that if the universe consisted of an infinite number of stars equally distributed through space, then every line of sight would come from a star and the night sky would glow uniformly, which is observationally not true.
- old age pension — An old age pension is a regular amount of money that people receive from the government when they have retired from work.
- operationalised — Simple past tense and past participle of operationalise.
- ophthalmoscopes — Plural form of ophthalmoscope.
- optical scanner — the process of interpreting data in printed, handwritten, bar-code, or other visual form by a device (optical scanner or reader) that scans and identifies the data.
- optical storage — optical disk drive
- outside caliper — a caliper whose legs turn inward so that it can measure outside dimensions, as the diameter of a rod.
- over-capitalise — to fix the total amount of securities of a corporation in excess of the limits set by law or by sound financial policy.
- overcapitalizes — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of overcapitalize.
- overspeculation — the contemplation or consideration of some subject: to engage in speculation on humanity's ultimate destiny.
- painter's colic — Pathology. lead poisoning causing intense intestinal pain.
- palaeomagnetism — the study of the fossil magnetism in rocks, used to determine the past configurations of the continents and to investigate the past shape and magnitude of the earth's magnetic field
- palaeomagnetist — a student of or expert in palaeomagnetism
- paleogeophysics — (used with a plural verb) inferred geophysical conditions or processes of designated periods of the geologic past.
- paradise flower — a prickly vine, Solanum wendlandii, of the nightshade family, native to Costa Rica, having branched clusters of showy lilac-blue flowers.
- parallel cousin — a cousin who is the child either of one's mother's sister or of one's father's brother.
- passifloraceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Passifloraceae, a tropical and subtropical family of climbing plants including the passionflowers: the flowers have five petals and threadlike parts forming a dense mass (corona) around the central disc
- passport holder — a person who has a passport
- pastel-coloured — pale-coloured; in a shade such as pink or pale blue
- pastoral letter — pastoral (defs 11, 12).
- pastoral prayer — the main prayer in a church service.
- paurometabolous — designating or of a group of insect orders, as orthopterans or hemipterans, in which metamorphosis to the adult state from the juvenile state is gradual and without any sudden, radical change of body form
- peachblow glass — an American art glass made in various pale colors and sometimes having an underlayer of milk glass.
- pectoral muscle — muscle of the chest
- perissosyllabic — (of a line of verse) containing more syllables than expected for the metre being used
- personal column — The personal column in a newspaper or magazine contains messages for individual people and advertisements of a private nature.
- personal estate — movable property
- personal friend — a person who is a friend, rather than a colleague or acquaintance
- personal growth — development as an individual
- personal injury — injury to an individual
- personal stereo — A personal stereo is a small cassette or CD player with very light headphones, which people carry round so that they can listen to music while doing something else.
- personalization — to have marked with one's initials, name, or monogram: to personalize stationery.
- pheasant coucal — a brown and black, red-eyed Australian bird, Centropus phasianinus, with a pheasantlike tail.
- phenomenalistic — the doctrine that phenomena are the only objects of knowledge or the only form of reality.
- phoenix islands — a group of eight coral islands in the central Pacific: administratively part of Kiribati. Area: 28 sq km (11 sq miles). The islands and surrounding waters form the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the world's largest marine protected area. Area: 410 500 sq km (158 500 sq miles)
- phosphorylative — of or relating to phosphorylation
- photoelasticity — the phenomenon of double refraction of polarized light by a transparent substance under elastic stress, used to measure strain in elastic, transparent materials.
- physical memory — (memory management) The memory hardware (normally RAM) installed in a computer. The term is only used in contrast to virtual memory.
- physicochemical — physical and chemical: the physicochemical properties of an isomer.
- pick-and-shovel — marked by drudgery; laborious: the pick-and-shovel work necessary to get a political campaign underway.
- plainclothesman — a police officer, especially a detective, who wears ordinary civilian clothes while on duty.
- plantaginaceous — relating to or belonging to the family Plantaginaceae
- plastic surgeon — doctor who performs cosmetic surgery
- plate tectonics — a theory of global tectonics in which the lithosphere is divided into a number of crustal plates, each of which moves on the plastic asthenosphere more or less independently to collide with, slide under, or move past adjacent plates.
- platform scales — a weighing machine which has a platform that you put something on to be weighed
- platform tennis — a variation of tennis played on a wooden platform enclosed with chicken wire in which the players hit a rubber ball with wooden paddles following the same basic rules as tennis except that only one serve is permitted and balls can be played off the back and side fences.
- play favourites — to display favouritism
- please yourself — You say 'please yourself' to indicate in a rather rude way that you do not mind or care whether the person you are talking to does a particular thing or not.
- pleasure-loving — enjoying pleasure
- plethysmography — the tracking of changes measured in bodily volume