16-letter words containing s, y, a
- orthodoxy sunday — a solemn festival held on the first Sunday of Lent (Orthodoxy Sunday) commemorating the restoration of the use of icons in the church (a.d. 842) and the triumph over all heresies.
- orthosympathetic — Of or pertaining to the sympathetic component of the autonomic nervous system.
- osteoarchaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the study of bones found at archaeological sites
- otolaryngologist — Otorhinolaryngologist.
- overcompensatory — a pronounced striving to neutralize and conceal a strong but unacceptable character trait by substituting for it an opposite trait.
- paint-by-numbers — formulaic; showing no original thought or creativity
- papillary muscle — one of the small bundles of muscles attached to the ventricle walls and to the chordae tendineae that tighten these tendons during ventricular contraction.
- parallel sysplex — (operating system) A Sysplex that uses one or more coupling facilities.
- particle physics — the branch of physics that deals with the properties and behavior of elementary particles.
- parts of lindsey — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
- passive immunity — immunity resulting from the injection of antibodies or sensitized lymphocytes from another organism or, in infants, from the transfer of antibodies through the placenta or from colostrum.
- pay-as-you-throw — denoting a system for waste collection in which households are charged according to the amount of refuse they leave
- pays de la loire — a region of W France, on the Bay of Biscay: generally low-lying, drained by the River Loire and its tributaries; agricultural
- pearly razorfish — See under razorfish.
- personal hygiene — bodily cleanliness
- personal liberty — the liberty of an individual to do his or her will freely except for those restraints imposed by law to safeguard the physical, moral, political, and economic welfare of others.
- personal stylist — a person employed by a rich or famous client to offer advice on clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of personal appearance
- personality cult — deliberately cultivated adulation of a person, esp a political leader
- personality test — an instrument, as a questionnaire or series of standardized tasks, used to measure personality characteristics or to discover personality disorders.
- personality type — a cluster of personality traits commonly occurring together
- personnel agency — an agency for placing employable persons in jobs; employment agency.
- peter stuyvesant — Peter, 1592–1672, Dutch colonial administrator in the Americas: last governor of New Netherlands 1646–64.
- pharmacodynamics — the branch of pharmacology dealing with the course of action, effect, and breakdown of drugs within the body.
- phillis wheatley — Phillis [fil-is] /ˈfɪl ɪs/ (Show IPA), 1753?–84, American poet, born in Africa; probably Senegal.
- physical address — (memory management) The address presented to a computer's main memory in a virtual memory system, in contrast to the virtual address which is the address generated by the CPU. A memory management unit translates virtual addresses into physical addresses.
- physical fitness — good physical condition
- physical science — any of the natural sciences dealing with inanimate matter or with energy, as physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
- physical therapy — the treatment or management of physical disability, malfunction, or pain by exercise, massage, hydrotherapy, etc., without the use of medicines, surgery, or radiation.
- physical-capital — tools, machinery, computers, and other equipment that are needed for the production of goods and services: money spent by business firms on physical capital.
- physiognomically — the face or countenance, especially when considered as an index to the character: a fierce physiognomy.
- play off against — If you play people off against each other, you make them compete or argue, so that you gain some advantage.
- play one's cards — to carry out one's plans; take action (esp in the phrase play one's cards right)
- play-action pass — a pass play designed to deceive the defense by appearing to be a running play, in which the quarterback fakes a hand-off to a back before throwing a forward pass.
- pocket secretary — a long, narrow walletlike case, usually of leather and containing pockets for credit and business cards, paper money, etc., and sometimes a notepad and pencil.
- policy statement — a declaration of the plans and intentions of an organization or government
- political asylum — asylum provided by one nation to refugees, especially political refugees, from another nation.
- political system — a coordinated set of principles, laws, ideas, and procedures relating to a particular form of government, or the form of government itself: Democracy is a political system in which citizens govern themselves.
- polycondensation — formation of a polymer by chemical condensation with the elimination of a small molecule, such as water.
- poor boy sweater — a snug-fitting, pullover sweater with ribbing on both the body and sleeves, worn by girls and women.
- post-apocalyptic — of or like an apocalypse; affording a revelation or prophecy.
- primary consumer — (in the food chain) an animal that feeds on plants; a herbivore.
- primary industry — an industry, as agriculture, forestry, or fishing, that deals in obtaining natural materials.
- primary meristem — primary tissue derived from an apical meristem.
- primary syphilis — the first stage of syphilis, characterized by the formation of a chancre at the site of infection.
- progress payment — an instalment of a larger payment made to a contractor for work carried out up to a specified stage of the job
- pseudoparenchyma — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
- psychic distance — the degree of emotional detachment maintained toward a person, group of people, event, etc.
- psychoanalytical — a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of conscious and unconscious psychological processes.
- psychobiological — the use of biological methods to study normal and abnormal emotional and cognitive processes, as the anatomical basis of memory or neurochemical abnormalities in schizophrenia.
- psychogeriatrics — the psychology of old age.