12-letter words containing t, o, p, f
- petrifaction — the act or process of petrifying; the state of being petrified.
- pettifogging — You can describe an action or situation as pettifogging when you think that unnecessary attention is being paid to unimportant, boring details.
- phi-function — Euler's phi-function.
- 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 relief — a method of showing the configuration of the relief of an area by photographing a model of it that is illuminated by a lamp in the northwest corner
- 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.
- photofission — nuclear fission induced by the absorption of a high-energy photon.
- pillow fight — a mock fight in which participants thump each other with pillows
- pitched-roof — a roof sloping downward in two parts at an angle from a central ridge, so as to leave a gable at each end.
- placentiform — shaped like a placenta, with a flat rounded form
- 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.
- platform bed — a bed, originating in Scandinavia in the 1930s, consisting of a simple shallow box for holding a mattress situated on a slightly recessed pedestal.
- platform car — a railroad freight car having no enclosing sides or top; a flatcar.
- pocket knife — A pocket knife is a small knife with several blades which fold into the handle so that you can carry it around with you safely.
- point defect — an imperfection in a crystal's lattice structure, either a missing atom or ion creating a vacancy in the lattice or an extra atom or ion between two normal lattice points creating an interstitial.
- pontificates — the office or term of office of a pontiff.
- pontificator — the office or term of office of a pontiff.
- port of call — a port visited briefly by a ship, usually to take on or discharge passengers and cargo or to undergo repairs.
- portal frame — a frame, usually of steel, consisting of two uprights and a cross beam at the top: the simplest structural unit in a framed building or a doorway
- post-fascist — of or relating to various right-wing political parties in Europe which espouse a modified form of fascism and which take part in constitutional politics
- post-fordism — the idea that modern industrial production has moved away from mass production in huge factories, as pioneered by Henry Ford, towards specialized markets based on small flexible manufacturing units
- postfeminist — relating to or occurring in the period after the feminist movement of the 1970s.
- postfracture — taking place after a fracture
- potato flour — a type of flour made from potatoes
- poultry farm — place where fowl are bred
- power factor — (in an electrical circuit) the ratio of the power dissipated to the product of the input volts times amps
- powerlifting — a competition or sport involving three tests of strength: the bench press, squat, and two-handed dead lift.
- prefectorial — of, relating to, or characteristic of a prefect: prefectorial powers.
- prefloration — the internal arrangement of a flower-bud's petals and sepals before it opens
- prefoliation — the arrangement of leaves within a vegetative bud
- preformation — previous formation.
- preformative — a prefixture in Semitic languages
- preformatted — the shape and size of a book as determined by the number of times the original sheet has been folded to form the leaves. Compare duodecimo, folio (def 2), octavo, quarto.
- preformulate — to describe an active pharmaceutical ingredient chemically
- presser foot — a forked, metal device on a sewing machine used for holding the fabric in place while stitching.
- prime factor — any number in the set of prime numbers that is also a factor of a given integer
- professorate — the office or the period of service of a professor.
- proficiently — well-advanced or competent in any art, science, or subject; skilled: a proficient swimmer.
- profiteering — a person who seeks or exacts exorbitant profits, especially through the sale of scarce or rationed goods.
- profitlessly — in such a way as to not yield profit, as in financial gains or general benefits or advantages
- proof sheets — trial impressions made from composed type, or print-outs (from a laser printer, etc) read for the correction of errors; proofs
- proof spirit — an alcoholic liquor, or mixture of alcohol and water, containing a standard amount of alcohol. In the U.S. proof spirit has a specific gravity of .93353 (containing one half of its volume of alcohol of a specific gravity of .7939 at 60° F). In Britain proof spirit has a specific gravity of .91984.
- proof stress — the load per unit area that a structure can withstand without being permanently deformed by more than a specified amount.
- proof theory — (logic) The branch of logic describing procedures for combining logical statements to show, by a series of truth-preserving transformations, that one statement is a consequence of some other statement or group of statements.
- protest flag — a flag hoisted by a racing yacht to advise the judges of a violation of the rules by another yacht.
- pulp fiction — fiction dealing with lurid or sensational subjects, often printed on rough, low-quality paper manufactured from wood pulp.
- purification — to make pure; free from anything that debases, pollutes, adulterates, or contaminates: to purify metals.
- pussyfooting — behaving in an excessively cautious way