12-letter words containing s, p, t
- peritrichous — (of bacteria) having a uniform distribution of flagella over the body surface.
- permissivist — lenience toward or indulgence of a wide variety of social behavior.
- perpetualism — a belief in the permanence of a given thing; the belief that a given thing (e.g. the world, a political system) will last forever
- perpetualist — someone who holds to any form of perpetualism
- perplexities — the state of being perplexed; confusion; uncertainty.
- perquisition — an intensive and meticulous examination, pursuit, or hunt for something
- perseverator — a person who perseverates
- persian knot — a hand-tied knot, used in rug weaving, in which the ends of yarn looped around a warp thread appear at each of the interstices between adjacent threads and produce a compact and relatively even pile effect.
- persistently — persisting, especially in spite of opposition, obstacles, discouragement, etc.; persevering: a most annoyingly persistent young man.
- perspectival — a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Compare aerial perspective, linear perspective.
- perspicacity — keenness of mental perception and understanding; discernment; penetration.
- perspiration — a salty, watery fluid secreted by the sweat glands of the skin, especially when very warm as a result of strenuous exertion; sweat.
- perspiratory — of, relating to, or stimulating perspiration.
- pertinacious — holding tenaciously to a purpose, course of action, or opinion; resolute.
- pest control — rats, insects: extermination
- pester power — the ability possessed by a child to nag a parent relentlessly until the parent succumbs and agrees to the child's request
- pestilential — producing or tending to produce pestilence.
- pestological — relating to pestology
- pet passport — a document that officially records information related to a specific animal, as part of a scheme that allows animals to travel between member countries without undergoing quarantine
- pet scanning — the action or process of using a PET scanner to obtain an image.
- petaliferous — bearing or having petals.
- petite sirah — a dry red wine produced mainly in California
- petitionings — a number of appeals or requests
- petrobrusian — a member of a 12th-century sect in S France that rejected the Mass, infant baptism, prayers for the dead, sacerdotalism, the veneration of the cross, and the building of churches.
- petrochemist — someone who studies petrochemistry or works in the petrochemical industry
- petrodollars — Petrodollars are a unit of money used to calculate how much a country has earned by exporting petroleum or natural gas.
- petrogenesis — the branch of petrology dealing with the origin and formation of rocks.
- petrophysics — the analysis of the constitution and characteristics of rocks
- petrozavodsk — a city in NW Russia, capital of the Karelian Autonomous Republic, on Lake Onega: developed around ironworks established by Peter the Great in 1703; university (1940). Pop: 265 000 (2005 est)
- phagocytoses — phagocytize.
- phagocytosis — Physiology. the ingestion of a smaller cell or cell fragment, a microorganism, or foreign particles by means of the local infolding of a cell's membrane and the protrusion of its cytoplasm around the fold until the material has been surrounded and engulfed by closure of the membrane and formation of a vacuole: characteristic of amebas and some types of white blood cells.
- phantasmatic — pertaining to or of the nature of a phantasm; unreal; illusory; spectral: phantasmal creatures of nightmare.
- phantasmical — pertaining to or of the nature of a phantasm; unreal; illusory; spectral: phantasmal creatures of nightmare.
- phenocrystic — relating to a phenocryst
- philistinism — (sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
- phillumenist — a collector of matchbooks and matchboxes.
- philosophist — a person who affects philosophical knowledge
- phlebotomist — a specialist in phlebotomy.
- phonasthenia — difficult or abnormal voice production; vocal weakness.
- phonesthemic — (of a speech sound) shared by a set of echoic or symbolic words, as the sn- of sneer, snarl, snatch, snide, snitch, snoop, etc.
- phonotactics — the patterns in which the phonemes of a language may combine to form sequences.
- phosphatidic — of or relating to a phosphatide
- phosphatidyl — an atom or group of atoms containing one or more unpaired electrons derived from a phosphatide
- phosphaturia — the presence of an excessive quantity of phosphates in the urine.
- phosphoreted — phosphureted.
- phosphureted — combined with phosphorus, especially in its lowest valence state.
- photo finish — a finish of a race in which two or more contestants are so close to the finish line that reference to a photograph of the finish is necessary to determine the winner.
- photo spread — a picture spread. See under spread (def 33).
- photo-finish — If the end of a race is a photo-finish, two or more of the competitors cross the finishing line so close together that a photograph of the finish has to be examined to decide who has won.
- photo-offset — a method of printing, based on photolithography, in which the inked image is transferred from the metal plate to a rubber surface and then to the paper.