- PQ
- Parti québécois. The main separatist
political party of PQ.
- PQ
- Postal abbreviation for the Canadian
(.ca) Province of Quebec. Capital: Quebec.
The situation is not quite a parallel to ``New York, New York,'' because the
capital of the New York State is Albany, and Quebec's largest city is Montreal.
- PQFP
- Plastic Quad Flat-Pack. Similar to ceramic
same.
National Semiconductor has some specs
on the web. Their
illustration is at right.
The detailed mechanical drawing below is of a 100-lead PFQP for a
Fujitsu SCSI Controller
(MB86601A.)
- PQP
- Priorities, Quality, Productivity.
- PR
- Partial Remission. [Medical abbrev.]
- PR
- PhotoResist.
- PR, pr
- Pinch Runner.
- Pr
- Prandtl number. He must have been Austrian.
German names like that end in -el.
What, you wanted to know how the Prandtl number was defined? Oh.
- PR
- Proportional Representation.
- PR
- Public Relations. The term has come to have two distinct meanings that
overlap somewhat in practice:
- Advertising for the company rather than the product.
- Unpaid advertising: publicity through news outlets.
- PR
- Puerto Rico. USPS abbreviation.
The Villanova Center for Information Law and
Policy serves a page of Puerto Rican
commonwealth government links.
- .pr
- (Domain code for) Puerto Rico.
- PR
- Purchase Request.
- practical religion
- According to young Robinson Crusoe,
``I saw what is not often seen ... the Master, the Boat-Swain,
and others ... at their Prayers.''
- practise
- British spelling of the verb corresponding to the noun practice. In practice, however, many
writers forget the difference and conflate the spellings. As a mnemonic
device, note that the same rule is followed (throughout Anglophenia) with the
word advi{c|s}e: -ce for the noun and -se for the verb.
In US spelling, both noun and verb end in -ce. Another word pair distinguished
by British but not by US spelling is queane/queen. Interestingly, the
preservation of the -en past participle of get in American gave rise to
a distinction between the ordinary verb form and the modal got adopted from British in the twentieth
century.
- PRA
- Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act, enacted by the US Congress in August 1996,
replaced the AFDC program with block grants
to the states and eliminated an accumulation of protective and obstructive
federal statutory and administrative regulations.
- PRA
- Primary Rate Access.
- PRAC
- Planning and Resource Allocation Committee.
- practicing abstinence
- An interesting concept. Limber up first. Don't strain yourself -- work up
to it.
- praeteritio
- Standard Latin term for the rhetorical technique of mentioning
something by saying that one is not going to mention it.
I won't add that Latin ae often becomes
e in English words (particularly in American spelling), and that the
-tio inflection typically becomes -tion, so an alternative
term is preterition.
- PRAM
- Parallel Random-Access Machine.
- PRAM
- Permanent Random-Access Memory (RAM) based on
giant magnetoresistance (GMR).
Conceived as a substitute for disk storage: nonvolatile, ultralow-power,
with access times 10,000 times shorter than for comparable-size disk memories.
- PRAP
- Pylos Regional
Archaeological Project.
- Pratt & Whitney
- Back when their homepage was under
construction, they suggested you visit their parent company
UTC.
- Pravda
- Russian, `Truth.' (Cognate of English proof.)
Also the name of the Communist Party organ, founded in 1912,
whose last issue was that of July 29, 1996. Other news organs were
Izvestia (`News') and Trud (`Work').
The old story used to go, a man walks up to a Moscow kiosk...
- Customer: ``Have you got Pravda?''
- Newspaperman: ``No.''
- Customer: ``What about Izvestia?''
- Newspaperman: ``Not that either.''
- Customer: ``Have you got anything?''
- Newspaperman: ``Oh, we have plenty of Trud.''
- PRB
- Physical Review B. (Condensed matter section.) Published by the
APS, which provides
information online.
- PRBS
- PseudoRandom { Binary | Bit } Sequence.
- PRC
- People's Republic of China. Mainland China. Red China. China that
wouldn't fit in your cupboard.
- PRC
- Publications Rights
Clearinghouse.
- PR&D
- Process Research and Development.
- PRDA
- Program Research and Development Announcement.
- PRE
- Partial Reflection Experiment.
- PRE
- Pulse Radiation Effect.
- Preaching to the choir
- ``For those who believe, no argument is necessary. For those who do not
believe, no argument is possible.''
- preapproved
- Boy, is this your lucky day! The advertising department has authorized
New Accounts to receive your application. You are already approved for
consideration!
- preem
- Premiere. (Verb and noun.) Insider slang used
by Variety. Simultaneously one of the least decipherable and least
necessary. For a good list of Varietese terms, see <slanguage.pdf>.
(Most of the other terms are either widely used outside the pages of
Variety or are obvious.)
- preemie
- A baby born prematurely.
- PREMO
- Presentation Environment for
Multi-Media Objects. Not to be confused with primo, which
is English for `excellent marijuana' and Spanish for `cousin.'
- prep
- prepar{ e | ation }.
- PREP®
- Programmable Electronics Performance Corp. (nonprofit). A consortium of
companies and organizations in the business of programmable integrated circuits
and the computer-aided design tools, systems and methodologies used in
implementing designs with programmable devices.
- prepublication
- Before shredding by critics.
- presto
- Spanish, `I lend.'
- presto
- Italian, `fast.' Term used to indicate a tempo faster than allegro.
- presto
- Behold! Expression used in magic, meaning corrupted from original
sense similar to musical (`suddenly').
- PRESTO
- Precursory Research
for Embryonic Science and TechnOlogy. (Japanese
government program.) Pronounced peresuto, I guess.
- pretentious
- At a restaurant in Vail, Colorado, some of the entrees were
- Chili Rubbed Chicken Breast with Pepperjack Cheese, Avocado Spread
and Pico de Gallo. [Is rubbed a verb here?]
- Grilled Sirloin Burger with Carmelized Onion Jam and Horseradish
Cheddar Cheese. [What a waste of hamburger!]
- Smoked Trout. Sorry, I mean Smoked Trout Cake. No wait -- it's
Smoked Trout Cake Sandwich. With Vine Ripe Tomatoes, Lettuce &
Cheese Remoulade.
- Turkey Pastrami with Baby Swiss [Cheese?!] & Cole Slaw &
Orange Cumin Bread.
The prices were interesting -- ``10,'' ``8,'' ``7.5'' -- dollars, it turned out.
Here's a hint if you want to carry off the Europeanisticated thing: the plural
of Gelato is Gelati.
- preterition
- The rhetorical technique of mentioning something by saying that one is not
going to mention it. From Latin term praeteritio, I might add (but I won't).
- PRF
- Pulse Repetition Frequency.
- PRG
- Peer Review Group.
- PRI
- Partido Revolucionario Institucional. (`Institutional Revolutionary
Party' of Mexico.) Founded by Plutarco Elías Calles in 1929 as the
National Revolutionary party. Lázaro Cárdenas, elected president
on the party's ticket in 1934, forced Calles into exile. (Calles means
`streets.') The party adopted its current name in 1946.
According to Franz Kafka,
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new
bureaucracy.
In the elections of Summer 1997, the PRI lost its majority in Congress,
although the opposition can only constitute a majority with the cooperation of
all four opposition parties, which are arrayed across the political spectrum
(although in policy they all agree that taxes should be reduced, somehow).
When opposition members took control of congressional committees, they
discovered that there was no committee staff or history: in the past, the
PRI-controlled executive branch had sent over its legislative proposals
complete with sham committee deliberations.
In national elections held on Sunday, July 2, 2000, the PRI presidential
candidate was defeated by PAN for the first time
since 1934.
- PRI
- Primary Rate Interface.
- PRI
- Public Radio International. A part of National Public Radio. Go figure.
- PRI
- Pulse Repetition Interval.
- PRICAI
- Pacific
Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
- Prices Slashed!!
- From preposterous all the way down to merely ridiculous.
- Price to be determined.
- Limited number available.
- Priestley
-
Joseph Priestley produced oxygen gas (O2,
the stable molecular form of the element oxygen O)
in 1774 by solar-heating HgO with
a magnifying glass. He called it dephlogisticated air. He published
immediately. Carl Wilhelm Scheele had produced oxygen at least a year earlier,
but did not publish until 1777. Priestley is known as the first person to
produce (relatively) pure oxygen. Scheele is
remembered only by chemistry historians.
Priestley supported the French revolution, and for that support he was
hounded from his home and lived his last ten years in the US. (Being a Unitarian minister
probably didn't
help his popularity. Newton (vide s.v. TP)
kept his own conversion secret.) Lavoisier built on Priestley's and Scheele's
discovery (both contacted him in October 1774) and overthrew the phlogiston
theory they both supported with his own precise measurements. He gave oxygen
its name. He was executed as an officer of the Ferme Générale
during the terror of the French Revolution (1794, he was 51). His rival and
inferior, the physician and revolutionist Jean Paul Marat who agitated for his
arrest, did not have the pleasure of seeing him guillotined, as he was
assassinated in his bath by the Girondin Charlotte Corday. (It's not how you
think. He was in his bath for therapeutic reasons. He had contracted
something horrible while hiding from French authorities in the sewers of Paris.) We've gotten a bit off-topic here, haven't we?
- primary health care provider
- This is a medically licensed employee of your HMO
whose responsibility is to prevent you from obtaining adequate medical care.
- primate
- Monkey or bishop. Wilberforce was a primate in one sense, and a monkey's
uncle, but he didn't want to be a monkey's descendant. Yet though he was
prominent, he wasn't a church primate in the strictest sense.
- prime numbers
- The prime numbers are those integers greater than one which have only
trivial factorization (a prime number is divisible only by itself and one).
Chris Caldwell maintains an
extensive prime numbers
resource.
- Prime Number Theorem
- The number of distinct primes smaller than x is asymptotic
to x/ln(x) as x approaches infinity, where
ln(x) is the natural logarithm of x.
The asymptotic formula is an underestimate; the error is by a factor of
1.132 for x = 104 = 10000, and 1.0254 for
x = 1018.
The theorem was proven in 1896, and I really ought to know whom by.
- primer
- There are two common kinds of primer. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, everyone fluent in English knew that they were pronounced differently.
The liquid coating applied to a surface before subsequent painting was a
primer pronounced with a long i: ``PRIME er.'' If prime were not such
an absolute adjective, its comparative form primer would be a homonym of
this noun primer. The other primer was an
introductory book on a subject, the first book read-- typically in grade
school. This was pronounced with a short i: ``PRIM er.'' It was a homonym of
primmer. Over the course of the century, the word primer for the
book category became much less common. (I remember in eleventh grade, how the
late Miss Chew pointed out that our Algebra III textbook would be the first
book we had used in high school math that didn't contain the word
introduction or introductory in the title.) When people
encountered the increasingly rare word primer, they increasingly
pronounced it as they did its better-known homograph.
- PRIMUS
- PRIMary Care for the Uniformed Services.
- Primus inter pares.
- Latin: `First among equals.'
- Prince Charmin'
- Mistah Raaaght.
- Prince Charmin
- Mister Whipple.
- Princeton
``Princeton is a wonderful little spot, a quaint and ceremonious village of
puny demigods on stilts. ... Here the people who compose what is called
`society' enjoy even less freedom than their counterparts in Europe. Yet
they seem unaware of this restriction, since their way of life tends to
inhibit personality development from childhood.''
-- Albert Einstein, in a letter to Queen
Elisabeth of Belgium.
- Princeton Architecture
- Man, you should see Alexander Hall! Baroque and pug-ugly. Contrary
to widespread rumor, the Graduate College is not a slavish copy
of Magdalene College, Oxford (pronounced ``maudlin''). I confirmed this
personally. Cf. Harvard
Architecture.
Anyway, the Architecture Research
Institute, Inc. says that the information age is making buildings obsolete!
- principal
- The word that is often meant when ``principle'' is written. Both
mean ``first'' in some sense, but principle has the specific meaning
of an idea that is first, usually in the sense of being an appropriate
idea from which to begin a process of reasoning. Other familiar senses of
these homonyms are usually meanings of the word principal.
The noun principal is a person or agent; the noun principle is an
idea. There is an adjective in the form of a participle -- ``principled'' --
but the word principle does not function as an adjective, except
as an attributive noun. (The
``principle computer'' is a computer that calculates fundamental maxims. The
``principal computer'' is the one it hurts most to have crash. The first
doesn't and the second does.) Other examples:
The school principal in the principal school of the district is a principal
in the case against the town. The principal reason is that she was one of
the principal beneficiaries of the previous regime's lack of principles.
In an article in the June 17, 1996 TNR, Sara Mosle
accuses Charles Sykes of wanting to
... supplant school principals with business principles.
In a July 25, 1996 NYTimes Op-Ed (p. A23), Maureen Dowd writes that (not
yet disgraced at the time of writing) consultant Dick Morris, by generating
``teensy-weensy'' pronouncements for President Clinton to make on school
uniforms and such, gives him
... the aura of principal, if not principle.
- Principal Parts
- A subset of the forms of a verb, from which one can infer the remaining
conjugations.
In the German language, for example, the principal parts are usually taken as
(1) the infinitive, (2) the first-person singular past indicative, (3) the
past participle, and (4) the second- or third-person singular present
indicative. Not all of these are always necessary.
- Principal Value
- ... of an integral with a 1/x singularity (in the interior of
the region of integration). Defined in terms of
the integrals found by excluding a symmetric interval about the singularity,
The principal value is the limit of the integrals as that excluded interval
shrinks to zero size.
- principle
- A word often mistakenly written for
principal.
- Printer's Blue
- A turquoise color that is essentially copper phthallocyanine. The
structure, with rather less dimensional fealty to life than usual, is
indicated below:
_______
/-------\
/ \
/ \
\\ //
\\ //
\\_____//
| |
| |
N__________| |__________N
| \ / |
/\ | \ / | /\
/ \\ | \ / | // \
/ \\ | N | // \
/ \\_______| |_______// \
|| | \ / | ||
|| | \ / | ||
|| | \ / | ||
|| | N Cu N | ||
|| | / \ | ||
|| | / \ | ||
|| |_______ / \ _______| ||
\ // | | \\ /
\ // | N | \\ /
\ // | / \ | \\ /
\/ | / \ | \/
|__________ / \ __________|
N | | N
| |
|_______|
// \\
// \\
// \\
\ /
\ /
\_______/
-------
Well, the real molecule is planar also, so there's that. But the real molecule
has square symmetry, which is a bit hard to represent in ASCII.
As usual, unlabeled vertices represent carbon atoms. The copper atom at the
center is coordination-bonded to the nitrogens (also called ``chelated''; the
molecule is a ligand). Most of the lines represent single bonds, but the four
outer hexagons are aryl groups, with three double bonds. Carbons with fewer
than four bonds, and nitrogens with fewer than three, have hydrogens bonded to them to make up the shortfall. If any
of this wasn't obvious, you should take an elementary chemistry course.
This four-fold symmetric chelate structure is quite versatile. It occurs in
chlorophyll, hemoglobin, and myoglobin. The structure illustrated above has
evidently also been adapted for fighter spacecraft in Star Wars.
- prions
- Small proteinaceous particles that can
transmit disease. There is some evidence that they are the cause of spongiform
encephalopathies in various mammal species, but there is little direct evidence
even for their presence, let alone activity. Among the suspect diseases:
transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME), chronic
wasting disease (CWD) in mule deer and elk, scrapie
(in sheep), bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE,
q.v.) in ``cattle'' (i.e., in domesticated bovines), and various
diseases that affect humans: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome (GSS), Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), kuru (the disease that was determined by
epidemiological methods to be transmitted by the eating of a victim's brain by
his grieving family, don't ask), and Alper's Syndrome. [There's a
Jakob-Creutzfeld (JC) virus, but it doesn't cause
CJD.]
The obvious question is: if prions have no DNA, how
do they reproduce? This is only a funkier version of the earlier questions
about viruses: How do they live without mitochondria, other essentials?
Parasitically, by taking over host-cell apparatus. (Similarly, no-DNA viruses
-- retroviruses -- keep their genetic instructions stored in RNA and use reverse transcriptase to take over
replication apparatus at a more fundamental level. Over time, bits of viral
DNA have been incorporated into the human genome, but these bits generally
appear not to be expressed.)
For some guesses, evidence, and answers, try the Prion Diseases page.
- PR/IR
- Public Relations (PR) / Investor Relations
(IR).
- PRISM
- Performance and Registration Information Systems Management.
- PRK
- People's Republic of Kampuchea.
- PRK
-
PhotoRefractive Keratectomy. Resculpting of defectively focussed
cornea, by laser ablation. Cf. Radial
Keratotomy; more details at successor procedure LASIK.
- PRL
- Physical Review Letters. Published by the
APS, which provides
information online.
The journal itself is
available in electronic
form from OCLC.
- PRL
- Prolactin.
- PRM
- Performance Report Messages.
- PRM
- Programmers' Reference Manual.
- PRN, p.r.n.
- Pro re nata. Prescription Latin: `as needed.'
- PRN
- PR Newswire.
A kind of Associated Press for (PR?IR) press releases,
it seems. I guess PR in name stands for Public Relations (PR).
- pRNA
- Plasmid RNA.
- PRNG
- PseudoRandom Number Generator.
- PRO
- Peer Review Organization. Medicare
improved by a change of name to Quality Improvement Organization (QIO).
- proboscidea
- The order of elephants. (The order in taxonomy, not the circus, silly!)
A separate lineage of mammals seems to have evolved trunks in South America
when that was a separate continent, but the animals became extinct in the
prehistoric period. ``Seems'' because those trunks, like elephant
trunks, are soft tissue that usually doesn't fossilize; trunks have been
inferred from circumstantial evidence.
- proboscis
- An organ associated with the mouth that protrudes or can be protruded.
Used in feeding and in some cases for other purposes. Hmm.
- Proc.
- Procopius of Caesarea, maybe? Wrote a history of Justinian's
western wars.
- process cheese food, processed cheese food
- Must contain at least 51% cheese by weight.
Reassuring, isn't it? Skim milk, whey, and other substances may be
added.
- producers
- I had a conversation today with my old friend Joseph (José),
who recalled the following experience from his first job out of college
(chemistry degree), in Argentina in the early 1950's.
At the company where he was working, he was listening to some managers talking,
and they were using the word productores (`producers') in a way that
sounded odd to him. He protested that he and the other people working in the
plant were the producers, because they produced the product
(producían el producto). The managers explained that no, the
salesmen were the producers, because they produced the sales
(producían las ventas), and without sales there was no point in
producing anything else. I imagine that arguments for the comparable necessity
of something to sell would have fallen on deaf ears. See ears (when the entry
is in).
- PROFS
- PRofessional OFfice System. The name of a particular database system.
- program car
- Euphemism for a car that has been rented and abused for no more
than about a year, and that is now being sold retail to marks who will
pay more for it than the rental agency paid for it when it was new.
(But stay tuned: as of 1997 most of the US car manufacturers have
unloaded or announced intentions to unload their car-rental-company
properties/subsidiaries.)
- programme
- Commonwealth-English spelling of program. You see the word a lot in
UN names and publications. You also see a lot of
-ize and -ization there too. Either someone has come up with an ISO-standard English orthography, or they're using the
OED.
- programming wizard
- Television executive who plans a new Fall season filled with slavish
stupid clones of last year's magic hits.
The great thing about this practice is that the minority of viewers who loved
last year's few hits will now have many undaring formulaic rip-offs to choose
from, while the large majority will have nothing. This is very convenient
because programming your VCR is no problem when
there's nothing worth recording. Hence the origin of the term.
- project
- Project science has been distilled into the following xeroxlore:
The six phases of a project:
- Enthusiasm.
- Disillusionment.
- Panic.
- Search for the guilty.
- Punishment of the innocent.
- Praise and honors for the non-participants.
I only wish this were a joke entry.
Okay, here's some funny stuff as compensation. As an example of the
above, consider the Soviet downing of KAL007. Presumably the flight
started out with some enthusiasm. We'll skip the intermediate steps,
including the punishment of 269 innocents. Colonel Osipovich, the
SU-15 fighter pilot who shot it down, points out [NYT, 1996.12.9, p. A6]
that his bonus for the kill was only 200 rubles, minus postage,
whereas the ground-based radar officer who discovered the lost
passenger jet received a 400 ruble bonus. As Osipovich noted,
``Those who did not take part in this operation received double
their monthly pay'' for a bonus, while he received less than 87%.
Talk about injustice!
- PROLOG
- PROgramming in LOGic. An HLL.
Evidently, the design of this language was based on the idea that
logic is an important element in decision making and other fallacies.
One of the greatest language creators, in an essay on decision-making
called ``The Tempest,'' remarked on the by-then already grim prospects
for this language:
What's past is PROLOG.
- prom
- Short for promenade. An American high school ritual. This is now
universally called ``prom'' and never ``promenade,'' just as a sports fan
is rarely any longer called fanatico (`fanatic'), which is the
Spanish origin of the term. In American English today, the greatest
source of foreign borrowings is Spanish. This is really stealing from
the poor, because while Spanish is a rich language in many respects, it
doesn't really have many words to spare.
Example of usage: ``Nuclear holocaust?! Oh, no! -- now prom will be
cancelled!''
- PROM
- Programmable ROM.
[Pronounced ``prom'' like the social event, as in
``promenade.'' A ROM whose contents can be programmed at least once
outside the factory. Cf. BPROM, OTPROM,
EPROM, EEPROM.]
- Prometheus
- A freeware code for searching and viewing the Classical text CD-ROM's from PHI and TLG.
Currently (early 1998) available for testing at the Perseus ftp site, for
Mac only.
Plans are to port to Windows; add Boolean searches.
Also a titan who taught men secrets of the gods (fire and other preindustrial
technological wonders). For this he was punished
by Zeus (as described in the docudrama ``Prometheus Bound'') by being
chained to a rock and having birds peck at his liver. Since he was a
god, however, (of the titan generation) this didn't kill him, although
it is generally agreed to have been unpleasant. The story goes that
he eventually got off the rock by ratting on his fellow titans, who were
planning to revolt and recover control of the world from the Olympian
gods.
- PROM password
- In the good old days, anyone with physical access to a Unix box could
break in simply by rebooting it in single-user mode. For all I know,
this may be the only reason anyone ever bothered to learn the ed editor.
Recently, they've taken the fun out of it by storing a password in
PROM. If you lose this, you can't reboot and be
root without contacting the manufacturer.
- promiscuous hugging
- What, you need a definition?
- pron.
- PRONoun. A word that stands in place of and functions as a noun.
It might be objected that possessive pronouns (my, your, his,...) function
as adjectives, but so do the possessive forms of nouns, as well as attributive noun. While noun case
distinctions have disappeared from English, pronouns still maintain them.
English personal pronouns decline into three cases: nominative, oblique, and
possessive. (Oblique covers all forms appearing in predicates, other than
nominative and possessive; possessive is also called the genitive case.)
Personal Pronouns
Grammatical Number |
Grammatical Person |
Nominative form(s) |
Oblique form(s) |
Possessive form(s) |
modifier |
substantive |
Singular |
First |
I |
me |
my |
mine |
Second |
you |
you |
your |
yours |
Third |
he |
him |
his |
his |
she |
her |
her |
hers |
it |
it |
its |
its |
Plural |
First |
we |
us |
our |
ours |
Second |
you y'all |
you y'all |
your |
yours |
Third |
they |
them |
their |
theirs |
The forms indicated above are mostly ``standard.'' I have also given the
Southern dialectal y'all. Traditionally, this was strictly for the
second-person plural (like Latin vos, Spanish vosotros, German
ihr, etc.). Ignorant people who use y'all as a conscious
affectation often think it's synonymous with you (i.e., that it does not
distinguish singular and plural grammatical numbers). There is some
disagreement about the correct possessive forms of y'all.
Y'all's might be acceptable for both, or y'all might could use a
periphrastic construction.
Many languages mark degrees of formality or ``politeness.'' That is, they have
different words or expressions that have essentially the same meaning, but
which express in a recognized conventional way differences in some aspect of
the relationship between the speaker and the person spoken to or of. (For
Japanese, see keigo.) This is a common
feature of European languages, showing up most often in ``polite'' and
``familiar'' forms of the second-person pronouns. English does not now have
such marked forms, although you can achieve a similar effect in the vocative
case (familiar ``hey you!'' vs. polite ``uh, sir?). What is the vocative case?
You just saw it. (O gentle reader: if it's any help, the vocative case is
mentioned at this O entry.) The now unmarked
pronoun you was originally a polite form in English (like usted
in Spanish, vous in French, Sie in German, etc.), and that it
gradually displaced the original familiar forms (English thou).
When I get around to putting less obvious information in this entry, I will
mention that the Pennsylvania Amish came to use thou and thee in
an unusual way. I'll also discuss the capitalization conventions in German and
English pronouns, the reflexive (oblique) forms, and those poor Siberian high
school graduates.
But I'm not going to do that now. When I do get around to it, though, I'll
also mention that the word it is also a relatively recent innovation,
before which inanimate objects were referred to by she or he. I
will also, alas, record the gradual displacement these days of the generic
(i.e., the non-gender-specific) he, him, his by
they, them, and their.
- pron.
- pronounce. Notice that the noun loses a medial vowel: pronunciation.
That is reasonable, since that syllable is pronounced differently,
but since when did reasonableness ever affect spelling? And it's not just
that the spelling of the word pronunciation is unusually attentive
to pronunciation: cf. announce, annunciation; renounce, renunciation...
CMU serves a pronouncing
dictionary that you can download.
- prop
- Theater: property. Not the origin of ``to prop (up).''
- Aviation: propeller.
- ProPac
- An oversize gig bag (instrument carry case) with pockets for fake books and
sheet music, metronomes (if you teach, you're a pro), etc. The name is a trademark of ProTec, which might have some trouble
protecting the term from becoming generic.
- proparoxytone
- A (Gk.)
word with an acute accent on the antepenult.
Cf. also oxytone and
paroxytone.
- properispomenon
- A (Gk.) word with a circumflex accent on the
penult.
Cf. proparoxytone and
perispomenon.
- prophecy
- A prediction. Often a prediction made on the basis of supernatural signs.
Rhymes approximately with ``cough a sea.'' Compare with the verb
(next entry).
- prophesy
- To make or announce a prophecy. Rhymes approximately with ``cough a
sigh.'' Compare with the noun (previous entry).
Robert Ulery, posting off the top of his head, answered thusly the call
on CLASSICS-L (vide Classics entry)
for a mnemonic by which to remember the -cy and -sy distinction:
I think that I should never see
The verbal form spelled prophecy,
Nor will I ever cease to sigh
At noun forms misspelled prophesy.
David Wigtil suggests
- prophecy with a "c" that precedes "n" (for noun);
prophesy with an "s" that precedes "v" (for verb).
- prophecy rhymes with "cee" (the name of the letter);
prophesy is what's left over from this rule.
There is yet more at the chitlins entry.
- propomex
- I think they chose this name so that ``[name of product] promotes prostate
health'' would be a tongue twister.
Many years ago, research demonstrated that irritating commercials are
remembered best. This does not strike me as being one of the more attractive
self-correcting mechanisms of the ``free'' market.
- proposed syntax
- More often proposed sin tax. Suggestion of government revenue
enhancement by tax on over-the-counter pain medications regarded as legal
vices.
- proprioception
- The ability to sense the position, orientation, and movement of the body
and limbs. This sense is often described as conscious or unconscious, and that
poses interesting questions. (Think of some yourself.) The ability to balance
oneself implies proprioception.
The perception of movement -- a part of proprioception -- is called the
kinesthetic sense. Another name for that is kinesthesia, but this latter term
also has the meaning of the illusion of motion.
- proseminar
- An introduction to the resources and methods of graduate research. A
standard, typically required course in humanities disciplines.
- prosign
- PROcedural SIGN. In Morse code, a dot/dash (dit/dah; short/long; signal)
pattern representing a message rather than a character. Typically represented
by a letter sequence that has the same sequence of dots and dashes, but
transmitted without the pauses that separate letters. (It's not really
just pauses: CW communicators develop a natural rhythm that varies the
timing and spacing of dit's and dah's, and one recognizes the shift in
this pattern. Interletter spaces are a sort of
synecdoche of this pattern.)
The most famous prosign is SOS, which also has
an entry in the alt.usage.english FAQ.
Perhaps you're interested in a list of Q-signs
served here.
- prosthetic[s]
- One of Blake's ``Miscellaneous Epigrams'' explains,
When a man has married a wife, he finds out whether
Her knees and elbows are only glued together.
There's a page on
the history of prosthetics, less loosely construed than by me above.
It has to be said that Blake's wife was one of the all-time martyrs
of women's fidelity to their husbands' muses. And Karl Marx's wife
did not have material distributed unto-her-according-to-her-needs either.
[Karl Marx was a London-based itinerant reporter for the New York Herald
Tribune. Regarding his politics, he insisted ``I am not a Marxist.''
He's been dead for a
while now.]
- protease inhibitor
- A different kind of AIDS drug than the
nucleoside analogues. The first to
be approved by the FDA for the treatment of HIV
infection was Saquinavir (trade name Invirase, from Hoffman-La Roche).
Others are Ritonavir (trade name Norvir, also known as ABT-538, from
Abbott Pharmaceuticals), and MK-639.
- protein
- Even if you reduced your fat and carbohydrate intake to zero, you could
still get fat by eating too much protein. It gets converted to sugar (and ultimately fat) by a process called
gluconogenesis, vel sim. You can't win. Of course, if you're starving, this process allows you to ``waste away''
muscle instead of running out of energy and dying immediately.
Proteins are long polypeptide chains. Polypeptide chains are daisy-chained amino acids, the amino (-NH2) group
bonding to the acid group (-COOH) of an adjacent amino acid, with the release
of a water.
Proteins arrange themselves in commensurate helices called alpha helices
(3.8 amino acids per turn).
Here's
a nice tutorial on the geometry. It's part of a course in the
Principles of Protein
Structure.
The alpha helix structure of protein was deduced by Linus Pauling and
Robert Corey. Pauling always cited this success as something that only
chemists, with their structural insight, would deduce, while physicists
remained stumped. He was just whistling Dixie.
- proto board
- Any of various kinds of boards made for prototyping circuits--i.e.
for creating prototype circuits in a format convenient for reconnecting,
making corrections and trying different strategies. [Pay price in money,
size, and portability.] The most common proto boards now are of the type
called breadboard.
- provided intellectual resources to get beyond
- Bloviated.
- PRP
- Potentially Responsible Party. A popular term among those with a taste for
papery torts.
- PRPQ
- Programming Request for Price Quotation (RPQ).
A request for a price quote for computer programming. In other words, a
software RPQ, rather than a hardware RPQ (called computing system RPQ by IBM).
- PRSA
- Public Relations Society of America.
Frankly, I never heard of them until just now. Does that mean they're good,
or what?
- PR/SM
- Processor Resource/Systems Manager. IBM ESA
machine term.
- PRSSA
- Public Relations Student Society of
America.
- PRT
- Platinum Resistance Thermometer.
- PRT
- Polysilicon Resonant pressure Transducer.
- PRT
- PRinTer. Possibly one of those not-yet-extinct Line Printers.
- PRTCL
- PRoToCoL.
- Pru, Prue
- Short for Prudence, a girl's given name.
- PS
- Particle Simulation.
- PS
- PhosphatidylSerine. Also abbreviated PtdSer.
- ps, psec
- picosecond.
- PS
- PolyStyrene.
The IUPAC-approved name for styrene is now styrol.
This has achieved approximately no acceptance in English, but in Italian
polystyrene is called
polistirolo,
and in German
Polystyrol.
Used in styrofoam (Dow TM) cups. Recycling code 6 of
PCS. May be indicated by ``PS'' embossed beneath symbol.
Here in tiff format is an SEM micrograph of the
interior of a polystyrene packing peanut, courtesy of
ESEM.
There are also some
who are not so enamored of this magic substance.
Polystyrene was first developed by I. G. Farben in 1930.
- PS
- Popular Science. A monthly magazine of
technology. Considering
what a weasel word popular is next to science, it's not a bad
magazine.
- PS
- Portable (communication) station. Part of your future PCS.
- PS, .ps
- PostScript [Adobe (tm)].
- P.S.
- Eng. PostScript or LatinPostScriptum. A part of the letter written
after the letter was finished. Problem: when you think about it, this seems
to be a logical contradiction. Solution: don't think about it.
It gets worse: P.P.S.
- PS
- Power Steering.
- PS, PSU
- Power Supply (Unit).
In his `For A Rocker' (©1983 Night Kitchen Music
ASCAP) in the album ``Lawyers In Love,''
Jackson Browne sings:
Don't have to change, don't have to be sweet
Gonna be too many people to possibly meet
Don't have to feed 'em, they don't eat
They've got their power supplies in the soles of their feet
They exist for one thing, and one thing only
To escape living the lives of the lonely
Related information at the USSR entry.
Jackson Browne's full name is Clyde Jackson Browne; he is the son of
Clyde Jack Browne.
- PS
- Program Store.
- PS
- Proportional Spacing. Designates the printing of fractions of a space
between characters to achieve constant-width text justification.
- Ps.
- Psalm[s].
- PS
- Public Safety.
- PS
- Public School.
- PS
- Public Service. The Stammtisch provides one
in this file.
- PSA
- Philosophy of Science
Association. Closely associated with HSS.
Annual meeting held in even years, jointly with HSS annual meeting.
- PsA
- Piscis Austrinus.
Official IAU abbreviation
for the constellation.
- PSA
- PolySialic Acid.
- PSA
- Polysilicon Self-Aligned. Vide
self-aligned gate.
- PSA
- Potentiometric Stripping Analysis.
- PSA
- Problem Statement Analyzer.
- PSA
- Professional Skaters Association.
An ``international organization for the education of skating coaches.''
Based in Rochester, Minnesota. Isn't that where the Mayo Clinic is based?
Cf. USFSA.
- PSA
- Prostate-Specific Antigen.
- PSA
- Public Service Announcement. (Acronym is common within marketing and
advertising industry, but not among target audience.)
- PSB
- Polished Silica Block.
- PSC
- Packet Switching Cluster. (ATM packets.)
- PSC
- Packing Service Contract.
- Psc
- Pisces.
Official IAU abbreviation
for the constellation.
- PSC
- Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
One of four NSF-funded Supercomputer centers,
along with CTC, NCSA,
and SDSC). Participates with these in
MetaCenter.
- PSC
- Point Stress Criterion. Developed in J. M. Whitney and R. J. Nuismer,
``Stress Fracture Criteria for Laminated Composites Containing Stress
Concentrations,'' J. Comp. Mat., 8, 253 (1974).
- PSC
- Chief Port Security Specialist. A USCG job
description.
- PSCT
-
Polymer-Stabilized Cholesteric Texture.
- PSCT
- Peripheral Stem Cell Transplant. Stem cells are cells in the bone marrow
that originate blood cells.
- PSD
- Phase-Sensitive Detect{ion|or}.
- PSD
- Photo-Sensitive Detect{ion|or}.
- PSD
- Position-Sensitive Detect{ion|or}.
- PSD
- Power Spectral Density.
- PSD
- Programmer's Supplementary Documents. For BSD Unix.
- PSDC
- Pennsylvania State (economic
and demographic) Data Center.
- PSDS
- Public Switched Digital Service.
(