12-letter words containing w, e, a, p
- paddle wheel — a wheel for propelling a ship, having a number of paddles entering the water more or less perpendicularly.
- paddle-wheel — a wheel for propelling a ship, having a number of paddles entering the water more or less perpendicularly.
- palm warbler — a North American wood warbler, Dendroica palmarum, brown above and whitish or yellowish below.
- paper-weight — a small, heavy object of glass, metal, etc., placed on papers to keep them from scattering.
- parallelwise — in a parallel manner
- pasch flower — pasqueflower
- pasqueflower — an Old World plant, Anemone pulsatilla, of the buttercup family, having purple, crocuslike flowers blooming about Easter.
- passage hawk — a young hawk during its first migration.
- passage work — writing that is often extraneous to the thematic material of a work and is typically of a virtuosic or decorative character: passagework consisting of scales, arpeggios, trills, and double octaves.
- passion week — the week preceding Easter; Holy Week.
- pastures new — If someone leaves for greener pastures, or in British English pastures new, they leave their job, their home, or the situation they are in for something they think will be much better.
- pave the way — be a pioneer
- pay-per-view — a system requiring that a subscriber pay for each program viewed: championship games seen only on pay-per-view.
- peacock worm — feather-duster worm.
- pearly white — white and lustrous as a pearl.
- periodic law — the law that the properties of the elements are periodic functions of their atomic numbers.
- phonetic law — a statement of some regular pattern of sound change in a specific language, as Grimm's law or Verner's law.
- 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)
- piercing saw — a small, fine-gauge saw blade with uniformly spaced, angled teeth, inserted in a jeweler's saw frame and used to cut precious metal and such soft materials as ivory and shell.
- pine warbler — a warbler, Dendroica pinus, inhabiting pine forests of the southeastern U.S.
- pkware, inc. — (company, compression) The company, founded by Phil Katz in 1986, which produces the PKZIP and PKUNZIP compression tools and libraries for many platforms. Address: 201 E. Pittsburgh Ave., Suite 400, Milwaukee, WI 53204 USA
- planet wheel — any of the gears in an epicyclic train surrounding and engaging with the sun gear.
- plate warmer — a device for warming plates
- pleased with — satisfied or content with
- polar wander — the movement of the earth's magnetic poles with respect to the geographic poles
- 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.)
- 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 flask — a small flask of gunpowder formerly carried by soldiers and hunters.
- powder paper — Pharmacology. charta (def 2).
- 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 hammer — a type of mechanical hammer operated by compressed air and used by blacksmiths, metalworkers, and manufacturers
- power vacuum — a situation when a government has no identifiable central authority
- 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.
- powerwalking — a form of exercise that involves rapid walking with arms bent and swinging naturally.
- prairie fowl — prairie chicken.
- prairie wolf — coyote (def 1).
- praiseworthy — deserving of praise; laudable: a praiseworthy motive.
- prayer shawl — a tallith.
- prayer wheel — a wheel or cylinder inscribed with or containing prayers, used chiefly by Buddhists of Tibet.
- primary wave — Seismology. P wave.
- 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
- punxsutawney — a town in central Pennsylvania: Groundhog Day celebration.
- road sweeper — a person who sweeps roads