15-letter words containing s, p, o, n, r
- painter's colic — Pathology. lead poisoning causing intense intestinal pain.
- pairs champions — competitors in or winners of a pairs championship
- panoramic sight — an artillery sight that can be rotated horizontally in a full circle.
- pantopragmatics — universal intervention in the affairs of others
- panzer division — an armored division of the German army, especially in World War II, consisting chiefly of tanks and organized for making rapid attacks.
- paralation lisp — Embeds the paralation model in Common LISP. Available from MIT Press, (800)356-0343.
- parallel cousin — a cousin who is the child either of one's mother's sister or of one's father's brother.
- parkinson's law — the statement, expressed facetiously as if a law of physics, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
- parthenogenesis — development of an egg without fertilization.
- passenger coach — a carriage in which passengers sit
- pastoralization — to make pastoral or rural.
- pay as you earn — a method of paying tax in which the tax is taken off your wages before they are paid to you
- pepin the short — ("Pepin the Short") died a.d. 768, king of the Franks 751–768 (father of Charlemagne).
- percussion lock — a gunlock on a firearm that fires by striking a percussion cap.
- percussion tool — a power driven tool which operates by striking rapid blows: the power may be electricity or compressed air
- perfectionistic — a person who adheres to or believes in perfectionism.
- performing arts — dance, drama, music
- perfunctoriness — performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial: perfunctory courtesy.
- pergamentaceous — (esp of plants) resembling parchment, whether in texture or composition
- person of color — the quality of an object or substance with respect to light reflected by the object, usually determined visually by measurement of hue, saturation, and brightness of the reflected light; saturation or chroma; hue.
- 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.
- personification — the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.
- peter of amiens — c1050–1115, French monk: preacher of the first Crusade 1095–99.
- phloem necrosis — a disease of the American elm caused by a mycoplasmalike organism, characterized by yellowing and necrosis of the foliage and yellowish-brown discoloration of the phloem.
- phosphocreatine — a compound, C 4 H 1 0 O 5 N 3 P, found chiefly in muscle, formed by the enzymatic interaction of an organic phosphate and creatine, the breakdown of which provides energy for muscle contraction.
- phosphor bronze — a bronze, composed of about 80 percent copper, 10 percent tin, 9 percent antimony, and 1 percent phosphorus, having great hardness and resistance to corrosion.
- phosphorescence — the property of being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, as from slow oxidation in the case of phosphorus or after exposure to light or other radiation.
- phosphorylation — to introduce the phosphoryl group into (an organic compound).
- photojournalism — journalism in which photography dominates written copy, as in certain magazines.
- photosensitizer — a drug, food, or other chemical that increases sensitivity to light and other visible photons
- phototransistor — a transistor that amplifies current induced by photoconductivity.
- phrasemongering — the act of coining memorable phrases
- pictorial janus — K. Kahn, Xerox. Visual extension of Janus. Requires Strand88 and a PostScript interpreter.
- pink-shirt book — (publication) "The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC". The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. Perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a different picture of Norton wearing a pink shirt. See also book titles.
- pinkster flower — a wild azalea, Rhododendron periclymenoides, of the U.S., having pink or purplish flowers.
- pistachio green — a light or medium shade of yellow green.
- pithecanthropus — a former genus of extinct hominids whose members have now been assigned to the proposed species Homo erectus.
- plain of sharon — a plain in W Israel, between the Mediterranean and the hills of Samaria, extending from Haifa to Tel Aviv
- plastic surgeon — doctor who performs cosmetic surgery
- 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.
- pleasure-loving — enjoying pleasure
- poisson's ratio — the ratio, in an elastic body under longitudinal stress, of the transverse strain to the longitudinal strain.
- police marksman — a police officer skilled in precision shooting, esp with a sniper rifle
- police presence — attendance or proximity of police officers