12-letter words containing t, w
- pave the way — be a pioneer
- pearly white — white and lustrous as a pearl.
- pelton wheel — a high-pressure impulse water turbine in which one or more free jets of water are directed against the buckets of the rotor.
- pennywhistle — a cheap toy whistle orig. sold for a penny
- pester power — the ability possessed by a child to nag a parent relentlessly until the parent succumbs and agrees to the child's request
- phonetic law — a statement of some regular pattern of sound change in a specific language, as Grimm's law or Verner's law.
- picture show — motion picture.
- pied wagtail — a British songbird, Motacilla alba yarrellii, with a black throat and back, long black tail, and white underparts and face: family Motacillidae (wagtails and pipits)
- pillow fight — a mock fight in which participants thump each other with pillows
- piltdown man — a hypothetical early modern human, assigned to the genus Eoanthropus, whose existence was inferred from skull fragments that were allegedly found at Piltdown, England, in 1912 but were exposed as fraudulent through chemical analysis in 1953.
- pit dwelling — a primitive dwelling consisting of a pit excavated in the earth and roofed over.
- planet wheel — any of the gears in an epicyclic train surrounding and engaging with the sun gear.
- 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 wrap — a very thin, transparent sheet of plastic, usually packaged in rolls and often having the ability to cling to other substances, used especially to wrap and store food and for microwave cooking.
- plate warmer — a device for warming plates
- pleased with — satisfied or content with
- ploughwright — a person who makes ploughs
- polish wheat — a wheat, Triticum polonicum, grown chiefly in S Europe, N Africa, and Turkestan.
- poll watcher — a representative of a political party or of an organization running a candidate who is assigned to the polls on an election day to watch for violations of the laws that regulate voting, campaigning, etc.
- positive law — customary law or law enacted by governmental authority (as distinguished from natural law).
- post-weaning — to accustom (a child or young animal) to food other than its mother's milk; cause to lose the need to suckle or turn to the mother for food.
- postcardware — Shareware that borders on freeware, in that the author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to real estate "sales" in which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.)
- postworkshop — occurring after a workshop
- pot-walloper — (in some boroughs before the Reform Bill of 1832) a man who qualified as a householder, and therefore a voter, by virtue of ownership of his own fireplace at which to boil pots.
- powder chest — a small wooden box containing a charge of powder, old nails, scrap iron, etc., formerly secured over the side of a ship and exploded on the attempt of an enemy to board.
- power assist — a procedure for supplementing or replacing the manual effort needed to operate a device or system, often by hydraulic, electrical, or mechanical means.
- power factor — (in an electrical circuit) the ratio of the power dissipated to the product of the input volts times amps
- power kiting — an activity in which a person, sitting in a small buggy or wearing skis, etc, is propelled by the wind power generated by a large kite to which he or she is attached by ropes
- power-stream — to stream and watch (multiple videos, episodes of a TV show, etc.) in one sitting or over a short period of time.
- powerboating — a boat propelled by mechanical power.
- powerlifting — a competition or sport involving three tests of strength: the bench press, squat, and two-handed dead lift.
- praiseworthy — deserving of praise; laudable: a praiseworthy motive.
- preinterview — a preparatory meeting held before an interview
- presweetened — already sweetened
- printed word — The printed word is the same as written word.
- private view — a preview, esp of an art exhibition, for specially invited guests
- property law — the branch of law dealing with issues relating to land and houses
- prose writer — a person who writes prose
- provincetown — a town at the tip of Cape Cod, in SE Massachusetts: resort.
- punxsutawney — a town in central Pennsylvania: Groundhog Day celebration.
- put down for — If you put someone down for something, you write down their name and the fact that they are going to do, give, or buy that thing.
- putty powder — an abrasive consisting chiefly of stannic oxide, used for polishing hard surfaces.
- quartz watch — a watch that is operated by the vibrations of a quartz crystal controlled by a microcircuit
- quick-witted — having a nimble, alert mind.
- quieten down — If someone or something quietens down or if you quieten them down, they become less noisy or less active.
- quo warranto — (formerly, in England) a writ calling upon a person to show by what authority he or she claims an office, franchise, or liberty.
- randallstown — a city in N Maryland, near Baltimore.
- raoult's law — the principle that the fraction by which the vapor pressure of a solvent is lowered by the addition of a nonvolatile, nonelectrolytic solute is equal to the mole fraction of the solute in the solution.
- ratchet down — If something ratchets down or is ratcheted down, it decreases by a fixed amount or degree, and seems unlikely to increase again.
- rate of flow — the rate at which a liquid or other substance flows through a particular channel, pipe etc