12-letter words containing s, p, o, i, l
- phrenologist — a psychological theory or analytical method based on the belief that certain mental faculties and character traits are indicated by the configurations of the skull.
- phycologists — the branch of botany dealing with algae.
- phylogenesis — the development or evolution of a particular group of organisms.
- physiologies — the branch of biology dealing with the functions and activities of living organisms and their parts, including all physical and chemical processes.
- physiologist — a specialist in physiology.
- piano lesson — music class in playing the piano
- pictorialism — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- pictorialist — Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.
- pillow sword — a straight sword of the 17th century.
- pilot signal — a signal, as a flag or light, used to request a pilot.
- plain-spoken — candid; frank; blunt.
- plainclothes — Plainclothes police officers wear ordinary clothes instead of a police uniform.
- plastic bomb — a bomb made of plastic explosive.
- plastic flow — deformation of a material that remains rigid under stresses of less than a certain intensity but that behaves under severer stresses approximately as a Newtonian fluid.
- plastic foam — expanded plastic.
- plastination — a technique for embalming bodies by impregnating whole organs with silicon polymers
- plastocyanin — a blue protein found in green plants and in some bacteria
- pleiochasium — a flowering system in which several buds come out at the same time
- pleiotropism — the condition of a gene affecting more than one characteristic of the phenotype
- pleomorphism — existence of an organism in two or more distinct forms during the life cycle; polymorphism.
- plumbaginous — containing graphite.
- plumbiferous — yielding or containing lead.
- poeticalness — the characteristic of being poetical
- poison gland — a gland in some fish and amphibians that secretes venomous material
- polar lights — the aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere or the aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere.
- polariscopic — relating to a polariscope
- police state — a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy.
- policeperson — a member of a police force.
- policymakers — a person responsible for making policy, especially in government.
- poliorcetics — the science of siegecraft
- polish wheat — a wheat, Triticum polonicum, grown chiefly in S Europe, N Africa, and Turkestan.
- politicaster — an ill-suited or disliked politician
- pollyannaish — an excessively or blindly optimistic person.
- pollyannaism — an excessively or blindly optimistic person.
- polycentrism — the doctrine that a plurality of independent centers of leadership, power, or ideology may exist within a single political system, especially Communism.
- polydisperse — of or noting a sol that contains particles of different sizes.
- polygamistic — a person who practices or favors polygamy.
- polygraphist — an instrument for receiving and recording simultaneously tracings of variations in certain body activities.
- polyhedrosis — an often fatal disease of certain insect larvae or decapod crustaceans, caused by viruses containing DNA.
- polyhistoric — relating to a polyhistor
- polyisoprene — a thermoplastic polymer, (C 5 H 8) n , the major constituent of natural rubber and also obtained synthetically.
- polymorphism — the state or condition of being polymorphous.
- polymyositis — a disorder characterized by the inflammation of multiple muscles
- polyneuritis — inflammation of several nerves at the same time; multiple neuritis.
- polyomavirus — any of a genus (Polyomavirus) of papovaviruses that naturally infect wild and laboratory mice, and that cause tumors when injected into newborn mice
- polyribosome — polysome.
- polysaprobic — flourishing in a body of water having a heavy load of decomposed organic matter and almost no free oxygen
- polysiloxane — a polymer composed of silicon and oxygen atoms
- polystichous — arranged in rows or series.
- polysulphide — any sulphide of a metal containing divalent anions in which there are chains of sulphur atoms, as in the polysulphides of sodium, Na2S2, Na2S3, Na2S4, etc