15-letter words containing s, t, a, n, o
- overcompensates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of overcompensate.
- overspeculation — the contemplation or consideration of some subject: to engage in speculation on humanity's ultimate destiny.
- overstimulation — to rouse to action or effort, as by encouragement or pressure; spur on; incite: to stimulate his interest in mathematics.
- oxidation state — the state of an element or ion in a compound with regard to the electrons gained or lost by the element or ion in the reaction that formed the compound, expressed as a positive or negative number indicating the ionic charge of the element or ion.
- ozark mountains — an eroded plateau in S Missouri, N Arkansas, and NE Oklahoma. Area: about 130 000 sq km (50 000 sq miles)
- 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
- panophthalmitis — the inflammation of all eye tissue
- panoramic sight — an artillery sight that can be rotated horizontally in a full circle.
- pantopragmatics — universal intervention in the affairs of others
- paralation lisp — Embeds the paralation model in Common LISP. Available from MIT Press, (800)356-0343.
- parthenogenesis — development of an egg without fertilization.
- past continuous — past progressive.
- pastoralization — to make pastoral or rural.
- performing arts — dance, drama, music
- pergamentaceous — (esp of plants) resembling parchment, whether in texture or composition
- personal estate — movable property
- personal growth — development as 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.
- pheasant coucal — a brown and black, red-eyed Australian bird, Centropus phasianinus, with a pheasantlike tail.
- phenakistoscope — an early form of a zoetrope in which figures are depicted in different poses around the edge of a disc. When the disc is spun, and the figures observed through the apertures around the edge of the disc, they appear to be moving
- phenomenalistic — the doctrine that phenomena are the only objects of knowledge or the only form of reality.
- 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.
- phosphorylation — to introduce the phosphoryl group into (an organic compound).
- photojournalism — journalism in which photography dominates written copy, as in certain magazines.
- phototransistor — a transistor that amplifies current induced by photoconductivity.
- physicalization — to express in physical terms; give form or shape to: The dancers physicalized the mood of the music.
- pictorial janus — K. Kahn, Xerox. Visual extension of Janus. Requires Strand88 and a PostScript interpreter.
- 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.
- plainclothesman — a police officer, especially a detective, who wears ordinary civilian clothes while on duty.
- planck constant — the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, expressing the ratio of the energy of one quantum of radiation to the frequency of the radiation and approximately equal to 6.624 × 10− 27 erg-seconds. Symbol: h.
- 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 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.
- platitudinously — in a platitudinal manner
- point-and-shoot — of or denoting a camera that does not require manual adjustment of shutter speed, focus, aperture, etc.
- poisson's ratio — the ratio, in an elastic body under longitudinal stress, of the transverse strain to the longitudinal strain.
- polish notation — a logical notation that dispenses with the need for brackets by writing the logical constants as operators preceding their arguments
- polling station — voting venue
- polycrystalline — (of a rock or metal) composed of aggregates of individual crystals.
- polyunsaturated — of or noting a class of animal or vegetable fats, especially plant oils, whose molecules consist of carbon chains with many double bonds unsaturated by hydrogen atoms and that are associated with a low cholesterol content of the blood.
- pontifical mass — (sometimes lowercase) Roman Catholic Church. a High Mass celebrated by a bishop or other prelate.
- pontine marshes — an area of W Italy, southeast of Rome: formerly malarial swamps, drained in 1932–34 after numerous attempts since 160 bc had failed
- port washington — a town on NW Long Island, in SE New York.