15-letter words starting with pr
- primordial soup — the seas and atmosphere as they existed on earth before the existence of life, consisting primarily of an oxygen-free gaseous mixture containing chiefly water, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.
- primrose family — the plant family Primulaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants having simple, opposite, whorled, or basal leaves, flowers with a five-lobed corolla, and capsular fruit, and including cyclamen, loosestrife of the genus Lysimachia, pimpernel, primrose, and shooting star.
- primrose yellow — primrose (def 3).
- prince charming — (sometimes lowercase) a man who embodies a woman's romantic ideal.
- prince of peace — Jesus Christ, regarded by Christians as the Messiah. Isa. 9:6.
- prince of wales — Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall ("The Black Prince") 1330–76, English military leader (son of Edward III).
- prince's island — former name of Príncipe.
- princess regent — a princess who is regent of a country.
- principal focus — focal point (def 1).
- principal ideal — the smallest ideal containing a given element in a ring; an ideal in a ring with a multiplicative identity, obtained by multiplying each element of the ring by one specified element.
- principal parts — a set of inflected forms of a form class from which all the other inflected forms can be derived, as sing, sang, sung; smoke, smoked.
- principal plane — a plane that is perpendicular to the axis of a lens, mirror, or other optical system and at which rays diverging from a focal point are deviated parallel to the axis or at which rays parallel to the axis are deviated to converge to a focal point.
- principal point — the point where a principal plane intersects the axis.
- principal value — a value selected at a point in the domain of a multiple-valued function, chosen so that the function has a single value at the point.
- printed circuit — a circuit in which the interconnecting conductors and some of the circuit components have been printed, etched, etc., onto a sheet or board of dielectric material (PC board, printed-circuit board)
- printer's devil — devil (def 5).
- printer's error — an error introduced into typeset copy by the compositor, so that the printer cannot charge for correcting it. Abbreviation: P.E., p.e.
- printing office — a shop or factory in which printing is done.
- prior restraint — a court order banning publication of unpublished material.
- prism binocular — Usually, prism binoculars. Optics. binocular (def 1).
- prismatic layer — the middle layer of the shell of certain mollusks, consisting chiefly of crystals of calcium carbonate.
- prison governor — the senior administrator or head of a prison
- prison sentence — confinement in prison as a punishment imposed on a person who has been found guilty of a crime
- prisoner of war — a person who is captured and held by an enemy during war, especially a member of the armed forces. Abbreviation: POW.
- prisoner's base — any of various children's games in which each of two teams has a home base where members of the opposing team are kept prisoner after being tagged or caught and from which they can be freed only in specified ways.
- prittle-prattle — foolish or idle talk; babble
- private company — a company whose shareholders may not exceed 50 in number and whose shares may not be offered for public subscription.
- private hearing — a formal or official trial that is not open to the public
- private patient — a patient receiving medical treatment not paid for by the National Health Service
- private pay bed — (in Britain) a bed in a National Health Service hospital, reserved for private patients who pay a consultant acting privately for treatment and who are charged by the health service for use of hospital facilities
- private soldier — A private soldier is a soldier of the lowest rank in an army or the marines.
- private tuition — instruction, esp that received in a small group or individually, that is arranged and paid for by an individual rather than by the state
- privately owned — owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by the state or a public body
- pro-abortionist — pro-choice.
- pro-confederate — united in a league, alliance, or conspiracy.
- pro-integration — an act or instance of combining into an integral whole.
- pro-nationalist — a person devoted to nationalism.
- probation order — an order imposed by a magistrate or judge under which an offender is sentenced to probation rather than imprisonment
- probationership — the position of a probationer
- probit equation — A probit equation is used to quantify the relationship between the concentration of a dangerous material and its effect on people.
- problem-solving — skills, process: of finding solutions
- problematically — of the nature of a problem; doubtful; uncertain; questionable.
- process control — a method of controlling and improving a process using statistical analysis
- process costing — a method of assigning costs to production processes where products must of necessity be produced in one continuous process, with unit cost arrived at by averaging units produced to the total cost of the process.
- process heating — Process heating is heating, usually from steam, which is used to increase the temperature in a process vessel.
- processed foods — foods that have been treated or prepared by a special method, esp in order to preserve them
- processionalist — a member of a procession
- procrastinating — to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
- procrastination — the act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention: She was smart, but her constant procrastination led her to be late with almost every assignment.
- procrastinative — to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.