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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:
  1. Advertising for the company rather than the product.
  2. 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 Hg O 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:

  1. Enthusiasm.
  2. Disillusionment.
  3. Panic.
  4. Search for the guilty.
  5. Punishment of the innocent.
  6. 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
  1. Theater: property. Not the origin of ``to prop (up).''
  2. 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

  1. prophecy with a "c" that precedes "n" (for noun); prophesy with an "s" that precedes "v" (for verb).
  2. 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.

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