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17-letter words containing s, p, e, n, t

  • operation sealion — the codename for Hitler's proposed invasion (1940) of Great Britain
  • operations centre — a centre where activities of a business, organization, etc, are administrated and take place
  • opisthobranchiate — (zoology) Of or pertaining to the Opisthobranchiata.
  • organ-pipe cactus — a treelike or columnar cactus, Lemaireocereus marginatus, of Mexico, having a central, erect spine surrounded by spreading spines in clusters of five to eight, and funnel-shaped, brownish-purple flowers.
  • over-compensation — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
  • pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
  • paleoconservative — a person advocating an older, traditional type of conservatism, especially in politics.
  • papanicolaou test — Pap test.
  • parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
  • particle kinetics — Particle kinetics is the study of the movement of particles and the forces that cause this movement.
  • parts of kesteven — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
  • parts per million — the number of units (of a substance) present in a million units of another substance
  • pascal's triangle — a triangular arrangement of the binomial coefficients of the expansion (x + y) n for positive integral values of n.
  • passenger station — a station used by passengers
  • passenger traffic — number of passengers
  • passive restraint — a safety device, as an air bag or special seat belt, that is activated automatically to protect an automobile passenger at the moment of impact when a collision occurs.
  • pasteur institute — an organization in Paris that was founded in 1887. It does research on micro-organisms and diseases
  • pasteur treatment — Pasteur's method of preventing certain diseases, esp. rabies, by increasing the strength of successive inoculations with a specific weakened or attenuated virus
  • paternalistically — the system, principle, or practice of managing or governing individuals, businesses, nations, etc., in the manner of a father dealing benevolently and often intrusively with his children: The employees objected to the paternalism of the old president.
  • paymaster general — a government minister responsible for making payments by government departments
  • penalty shoot-out — In football, a penalty shoot-out is a way of deciding the result of a game that has ended in a draw. Players from each team try to score a goal in turn until one player fails to score and their team loses the game.
  • penitential psalm — any of the Psalms (the 6th, 32nd, 38th, 51st, 102nd, 130th, and 143rd) that give expression to feelings of penitence and that are used in various Christian liturgical services.
  • peppermint spirit — a green or colorless alcoholic solution of the volatile oil produced by the peppermint leaf, used as a carminative and flavoring agent.
  • percussion bullet — a bullet that is exploded by percussion
  • periodic sentence — a sentence that, by leaving the completion of its main clause to the end, produces an effect of suspense, as in Unable to join the others at the dance because of my sprained ankle, I went to a movie.
  • permanent address — a fixed address
  • perpetual spinach — a variety of spinach that keeps producing edible leaves
  • persistent memory — non-volatile storage
  • persona non grata — a person who is not welcome: He has become persona non grata in our club since his angry outburst.
  • personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
  • personal distance — personal space.
  • personal equation — the tendency to personal bias that accounts for variation in interpretation or approach and for which allowance must be made.
  • personal property — an estate or property consisting of movable articles both corporeal, as furniture or jewelry, or incorporeal, as stocks or bonds (distinguished from real property).
  • personality clash — friction between two people who have different personalities or points of view
  • perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
  • petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
  • phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
  • phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
  • photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
  • photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
  • picture messaging — Picture messaging is the sending of photographs or pictures from one mobile phone to another.
  • pillar-and-breast — room-and-pillar.
  • pinckney's treaty — an agreement in 1795 between Spain and the U.S. by which Spain recognized the 31st parallel as the southern boundary of the U.S. and permitted free navigation of the Mississippi to American ships.
  • pink-footed goose — a Eurasian goose, Anser brachyrhynchus, having a reddish-brown head, pink legs, and a pink band on its black beak
  • pioneering spirit — a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things
  • play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • plug and feathers — an apparatus for splitting stone, consisting of two tapered bars (feathers) inserted into a hole drilled into the stone, between which a narrow wedge (plug) is hammered to spread them.
  • plumbing fixtures — things such as pipes, sinks, toilets that are fixed in position in a building
  • point of presence — (PoP) A site where there exists a collection of telecommunications equipment, usually modems, digital leased lines and multi-protocol routers. An Internet access provider may operate several PoPs distributed throughout their area of operation to increase the chance that their subscribers will be able to reach one with a local telephone call. The alternative is for them to use virtual PoPs (virtual points of presence) via some third party.
  • point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
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