15-letter words starting with p
- pigeon shooting — the act of hunting and shooting live pigeons
- piggyback plant — a plant, Tolmiea menziesii, of the saxifrage family, native to western North America, that produces new plants at the base of its broad, hairy leaves and that is popular as a houseplant.
- pilgrim fathers — the Pilgrims (of Plymouth Colony)
- pilgrimage site — a shrine or other sacred place that people travel to as an act of religious devotion
- pilsner glass's — a pale, light lager beer.
- pinball machine — the tablelike, usually coin-operated machine on which pinball is played.
- pincer movement — a military maneuver in which both flanks of an enemy force are attacked with the aim of attaining complete encirclement.
- pine leaf aphid — any of various homopterous insects of the family Adelgidae, as Adelges abietis (spruce gall aphid) and Pineus pinifoliae (pine leaf aphid) that feed and form galls on conifers.
- pine tree state — Maine (used as a nickname).
- pineapple juice — fruit drink: nectar of pineapple
- pink-shirt book — (publication) "The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC". The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. Perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a different picture of Norton wearing a pink shirt. See also book titles.
- pinkster flower — a wild azalea, Rhododendron periclymenoides, of the U.S., having pink or purplish flowers.
- pinochet ugarte — Augusto [ou-goos-taw] /aʊˈgus tɔ/ (Show IPA), 1915–2006, Chilean army general and political leader: president 1973–90.
- pinocytotically — by the process of pinocytosis or in a pinocytotic manner
- pissing contest — Slang: Vulgar. a contentious argument; confrontation.
- pistachio green — a light or medium shade of yellow green.
- pitcairn island — a small British island in the S Pacific, SE of Tuamotu Archipelago: settled 1790 by mutineers of the Bounty. 2 sq. mi. (5 sq. km).
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- pithecanthropus — a former genus of extinct hominids whose members have now been assigned to the proposed species Homo erectus.
- pituitary gland — a small, somewhat cherry-shaped double structure attached by a stalk to the base of the brain and constituting the master endocrine gland affecting all hormonal functions in the body, consisting of an anterior region ((anterior pituitary) or (adenohypophysis)) that develops embryonically from the roof of the mouth and that secretes growth hormone, LH, FSH, ACTH, TSH, and MSH, a posterior region ((posterior pituitary) or (neurohypophysis)) that develops from the back of the forebrain and that secretes the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin, and an intermediate part (pars intermedia) derived from the anterior region but joined to the posterior region, that secretes the hormone MSH in lower vertebrates.
- pixels per inch — (unit, graphics) (ppi) The unit used to measure resolution of a bitmap display or video input device.
- plagiostomatous — plagiostome
- plain chocolate — dark eating chocolate
- plain of sharon — a plain in W Israel, between the Mediterranean and the hills of Samaria, extending from Haifa to Tel Aviv
- plainclothesman — a police officer, especially a detective, who wears ordinary civilian clothes while on duty.
- planck constant — the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, expressing the ratio of the energy of one quantum of radiation to the frequency of the radiation and approximately equal to 6.624 × 10− 27 erg-seconds. Symbol: h.
- plane surveying — the surveying of areas of limited size, making no corrections for the earth's curvature
- planet-stricken — believed to be adversely affected mentally or physically by the planets
- planimetrically — in a planimetric manner
- planned economy — an economic system in which the government controls and regulates production, distribution, prices, etc.
- planning blight — the harmful effects of uncertainty about likely restrictions on the types and extent of future development in a particular area on the quality of life of its inhabitants and the normal growth of its business and community enterprises
- plant agreement — a collective agreement at plant level within industry
- plant pathology — the branch of botany dealing with diseases of plants.
- plant-hire firm — a company that hires out mobile mechanical equipment for construction, road-making, etc
- plantaginaceous — relating to or belonging to the family Plantaginaceae
- planter's punch — a punch made with rum, lime juice, sugar, and water or soda.
- plasma membrane — cell membrane.
- plastic surgeon — doctor who performs cosmetic surgery
- plastic surgery — the branch of surgery dealing with the repair or replacement of malformed, injured, or lost organs or tissues of the body, chiefly by the transplant of living tissues.
- plate tectonics — a theory of global tectonics in which the lithosphere is divided into a number of crustal plates, each of which moves on the plastic asthenosphere more or less independently to collide with, slide under, or move past adjacent plates.
- platform rocker — a rocking chair supported on a stationary base
- platform scales — a weighing machine which has a platform that you put something on to be weighed
- platform tennis — a variation of tennis played on a wooden platform enclosed with chicken wire in which the players hit a rubber ball with wooden paddles following the same basic rules as tennis except that only one serve is permitted and balls can be played off the back and side fences.
- platform ticket — a pass allowing a visitor to enter upon a railroad platform from which those not traveling are ordinarily excluded.
- platinum blonde — a person, especially a girl or woman, whose hair is of a pale blond or silver color, usually colored artificially by bleaching or dyeing.
- platitudinarian — a person who frequently or habitually utters platitudes.
- platitudinously — in a platitudinal manner
- platyhelminthes — a phylum of worms having bilateral symmetry and a soft, usually flattened body, comprising the flatworms.
- play favourites — to display favouritism
- play havoc with — bring chaos to