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 Talk Talk - Communication terms
Category: General technical and industrial
Date & country: 28/05/2010, UK
Words: 18630


patchwork
Textile technique used mainly for quilts and bedcovers. Small pieces of fabric, often offcuts, in varying colours and patterns, are sewn together by the edges, usually in a geometric pattern, to form one large piece of material. Patchwork fabrics were popular for dresses in the 1960s. The technique is of peasant origin, and is a way of recycling ol...

patina
Effect produced on bronze by oxidation, which turns the surface green, and by extension any lacquering or finishing technique, other than gilding, applied to bronze objects. Patina can also mean the surface texture of old furniture, silver, and antique objects

parquetry
Geometric version of marquetry: a decorative veneer applied to furniture and floors, composed of shaped pieces of wood or other suitable materials, such as bone, horn, or ivory, to form a geometric pattern or mosaic. Parquetry was first practised in Germany and the Low Countries; it was introduced from there to France in the 17th century, a...

Pacific Islands Forum
Association of states in the region to discuss common interests and develop common policies, created in 1971 as an offshoot of the South Pacific Commission, now the Pacific Community. Its 26 member countries include Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua...

Paley, William
English Christian theologian and philosopher. He put forward the argument for design theory, which reasons that the complexity of the universe necessitates a superhuman creator and that the existence of this being (God) can be deduced from a `design` seen in all living creatures. His views were widely held until challenged by Charles Darw...

passive smoking
Inhalation of tobacco smoke from other people's cigarettes; see smoking

parental responsibility
In law, the rights, powers, authority, and duties of parents in relation to a child and the child's property. Parental responsibility may be given to a person, or people, other than the parents: by the private appointment of a guardian or by order of court under the 1989 Children Act (see residence and contact). A mother always has parental...

pasta
Food made from a dough of durum-wheat flour or semolina, water, and, sometimes egg, and cooked in boiling water. It is usually served with a sauce. Pasta is available either fresh or dried, and comes in a wide variety of shapes. It may be creamy yellow or coloured green with spinach or red with tomato. Pasta has been used in Italian cooking sin...

packet switching
Method of transmitting data between computers connected in a network. Packet switched networks do not provide a dedicated connection between two locations, as with a circuit switched network. Packet switched networks make more effective use of bandwidth than circuit switched networks, and are more resilient to breaks in network links because there ...

password
Secret combination of characters used in computing to control access and thus to ensure data security

palisade cell
Cylindrical cell lying immediately beneath the upper epidermis of a leaf. Palisade cells normally exist as one closely packed row and contain many chloroplasts. During the hours of daylight palisade cells are photosynthetic, using the energy of the sun to create carbohydrates from water and carbon di...

patella
Flat bone embedded in the knee tendon of birds and mammals, which protects the joint from injury

parallel device
In computing, a device that communicates binary data by sending the bits that represent each character simultaneously along a set of separate data lines, unlike a serial device

Pascal's triangle
Triangular array of numbers (with 1 at the apex), in which each number is the sum of the pair of numbers above it. It is named after French mathematician Blaise Pascal, who used it in his study of probability. When plotted at equal distances along a horizontal axis, the numbers in the rows give the b...

pay
Financial reward given by employers to employees for their work. Take-home pay or net pay is pay after income tax, national insurance contributions, and any other deductions have been taken away. Gross pay is before deductions. The pay of manual workers is normally called their wage; white-collar workers are usually said to receive a sa...

Pay-As-You-Earn
System of tax collection in the UK in which income tax is deducted on a regular basis by the employer from wages before they are paid. PAYE tax deductions are calculated so that when added up they will approximately equal the total amount of tax likely to be due in that year. In the USA this is called withholding tax

Pala dynasty
Northeastern Indian hereditary rulers, influential between the 8th and 13th centuries. Based in the agriculturally rich region of Bihar and Bengal, the dynasty was founded by Gopala, who had been elected king, and reached its peak under his son Dharmapala (reigned c. 770–810). The Palas, who patronized Buddhism at a time whe...

Pallava dynasty
Hereditary Hindu rulers who dominated southeastern India between the 4th and 9th centuries. The dynasty's greatest kings were Simhavisnu (ruled c. 575–600) and Narasimhavarman I (ruled 630–668). Their capital was Kanchi, southwest of Madras (now Chennai). Under the Pallavas, maritime trade with Sri Lanka and Southea...

Pandya dynasty
Southern Indian hereditary rulers based in the region around Madurai (its capital). The dynasty extended its power into Kerala (southwestern India) and Sri Lanka during the reigns of kings Kadungon (ruled 590–620), Arikesar Maravarman (670–700), Varagunamaharaja I (765–815), and Srimara Srivallabha (815–862). Pandya influence pe...

Pataliputra
Ancient northern Indian city, founded c. 490 BC as a small fort (Pataligrama) near the River Ganges within the kingdom of Magadha janapada. It became the capital for both the Mauryan dynasty under Chandragupta and, later, of the imperial Guptas. During the reign of Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century BC, it was th...

particle detector
One of a number of instruments designed to detect subatomic particles and track their paths; they include the cloud chamber, bubble chamber, spark chamber, and multiwire chamber. The earliest particle detector to reveal the paths of particles was the cloud chamber, which contains a super-saturated vapour in which particles leave a trail of ...

palindrome
Word, sentence, or verse that reads the same backwards as forwards (ignoring word breaks and punctuation). `Madam, in Eden, I'm Adam.` `Ten animals I slam in a net.`

paradox
Literary device or device of rhetoric which is a statement that seems opposing or contradictory but contains an element of truth. The truth is emphasized by the unexpected form of expression. The Bible is a rich source of paradox: `Love your enemies`; `The first shall be last and the last shall be first.`

passive voice
In grammar, the voice of a verb in a sentence where the subject is affected by the action rather than performing it (`Jim has been eaten by a pig`). It is less direct than the active voice (`The pig ate Jim`) but is useful when the agent of the action is not known or not important (`That house was built in 1908`) or to...

past tense
In grammar, the form a verb takes to express action in the past. The past tense of regular English verbs is formed by the addition of -ed (climb, climbed). There are many irregular verbs, which form their past tenses in a variety of ways (buy, bought; shine, shone&#...

pathos
Quality that arouses pity, sadness, or sympathy. In literature, pathos is attributed to a scene or passage designed to evoke feelings of tenderness, pity, or sympathy

pagoda
Buddhist structure built to contain a relic or sutra (collection of recorded Buddhist dialogues and discourses). They are common in China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and Tibet. Pagodas usually have three, five, or seven storeys, although Chinese pagodas may be up to 13 floors high. They are crowned by a tall spire, or sorin<...

Palladian
Style of revivalist architecture influenced by the work of the great Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. The revival of the Palladian style developed mainly in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is recognized for its symmetry and elaborate, often exaggerated, adaptations of classical architecture. Inigo Jones introduced Palladia...

pastel
In art, chalky material consisting of ground pigment bound with gum. Pastel is a form of painting in dry colours and produces a powdery surface, which is delicate and difficult to conserve. Artists renowned for their use of pastel include Rosalba Carriera (1675–1785), La Tour, Chardin, Degas, and Mary Cassatt. The use of coloured chalks has a ...

pastoral(e)
Genre of art, literature, music, or a musical play that depicts the countryside or rural life, often in an idyllic way. Pastoral scenes were popular in classical Greece and Rome (for instance, Virgil's Eclogues), and again in the 15th to 18th centuries (for example, German-born composer Handel's masque Acis a...

Paisley, Ian
(Richard Kyle) Northern Ireland politician, cleric, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 1971, and Northern Ireland's first minister from 2007. An imposing and deeply influential member of the Protestant community, he is a founding member and moderator (chairperson) of the Fr...

Pale, the English
In Irish history, the fortified area round Dublin, where English rule operated after the English settlement of Ireland in 1171. The term soon came to include the surrounding counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Louth, and was recognized politically until the early 17th century, when medieval boundaries were overtaken by the Plantation of Ireland...

part
Music written for a performer (instrumental or voice) in a piece of music; for example, the flute part, violin part, or soprano part. In a large composition, the score and parts would include the full score (showing all the parts on each page) and the separate parts for the players and/or singers. A part, or voice, can also be an independen...

Pachelbel, Johann
German organist and composer. Due to the great popularity of his Canon and Gigue in D major for three violins and continuo, he is today known to many people only by this work. However, he was a leading progressive composer of keyboard and religious works, influencing Johann Sebastian Bach

Papa Doc
Nickname of François Duvalier, president of Haiti 1957–71

pagan
Usually, a member of one of the pre-Christian cultures of northern Europe, primarily Celtic or Norse, linked to the stone circles and to an agricultural calendar of which the main festivals are the summer and winter solstices and Beltane, the spring festival. The term was and often still is used as a dismissive phrase, signifying ignorance or &...

paranormal
Not within the range of, or explicable by, established science. Paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP) which takes in clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy; telekinesis, the movement of objects from one position to another by human mental concentration; and mediumship, supposed contact with the spirits of the dead, u...

Parkinson's law
Formula invented by the English political analyst Cyril Northcote Parkinson, which states that `work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion`

patriarchy
Form of social organization in which a man heads and controls the family unit. By extension, in a patriarchal society men also control larger social and working groups as well as government. The definition has been broadened by feminists to describe the dominance of male values throughout society

Palau
Country comprising more than 350 islands and atolls (mostly uninhabited) in the west Pacific Ocean. Government Palau has a presidential political executive. Its 1981 constitution, amended in 1992, provides for a two-chamber legislature, the Palau National Congress. It consists of an upper house, the Senate, with nine members elected nationwide,...

panorama
In art, a long painting stretched round the inside walls of circular buildings, intended to create the illusion of real scenery seen from a central vantage point (sometimes called a cyclorama). They were popular throughout the 19th century, illustrating subjects such as the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and Niagara Falls. A journey through t...

Paston Letters
Correspondence of a Norfolk family, together with state papers and other documents, covering the period 1422–1509. They form an invaluable source of information on 15th-century life and manners, and on conditions during the Wars of the Roses, as well as giving vivid portraits of some members of the Paston family

paint program
In computing, program that enables users to `paint` a picture on their computer screens, using a variety of brushes, spray-guns, and colours

Paean
In Greek mythology, the physician of the gods. Later Greek writers use Paean as a title for Apollo as a deliverer from evil. The word `paean` came to mean a genre of songs in Apollo's honour, and ultimately any battle, victory, or festive song

palliative care
In medicine, care aimed at reducing the suffering of those patients with terminal illnesses (those from which there is no hope of recovery). Treatment centres on keeping patients as comfortable, alert, and free of pain as possible. Palliative care also involves consideration of any emotional, social, or family problems that the patient is experienc...

paper nautilus
Another name for the argonaut

parliamentary government
Form of government in which the executive (administration) is drawn from and is constitutionally responsible to the legislature (law-making body). This is known as the `fusion of powers` as distinct from the `separation of powers`, in which the three branches of government the executive, legislature, and judiciary (courts sy...

parliamentary sovereignty
Doctrine defined by A V Dicey (1835–1922), in his book Law of the Constitution (1885), as the doctrine that Parliament has `the right to make or unmake any law whatever . . . and . . . no person or body is recognised by the Law of England as having the right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament`. ...

Parks, Rosa
(Louise McCauley) US civil-rights activist. Her refusal to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger and her subsequent arrest and imprisonment spurred the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, which ignited the civil-rights movement in the USA. Most early portrayals depict her as mer...

palmtop computer
Palm-sized computer that usually does not have a keyboard but is operated by using a stylus on a touch-sensitive screen. Although several companies launched palmtops and personal digital assistants, the first successful model was Palm Computing's Palm Pilot. (Palm was taken over by modem ...

Patterson, P(ercival) J(ames)
Jamaican centre-left politician and lawyer; prime minister 1992–2006. Having lost his seat in the crushing defeat of the People's National Party (PNP) by the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) in 1980, he oversaw the PNP's successful reorganization as a moderate centre-left force. Re-elected in 1989, he was chosen to succeed M...

paragraph
Subdivision of a piece of writing, usually dealing with one particular main point or theme. A paragraph starts on a new line and is normally indented. In word processing, it is not always indented – instead, a line space between paragraphs may be used. A paragraph has no prescribed length; it can be a single sentence or over a page in leng...

pattern poetry
Poetry in which the lines of text are used to form an image, usually one that illustrates the poem's subject or theme. A well-known example is the poem Easter Wings by the 17th-century English poet George Herbert, in which the lines are arranged to form wings. Among the earliest surviving examples of pattern poetry ar...

Palikir
Capital of the Federated States of Micronesia, on the island of Pohnpei; population (2000) 5,100

partition
(Ireland) Separation of Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act (1920). This was recognized by the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) following the Anglo-Irish War (1919–21). In the south, the nationalists were given independence from Brit...

parliamentary reform
In Britain, the aftermath of the Revolutionary Wars saw a period of political agitation for parliamentary reform that was met by government repression. However, there was a gradual reform of the clearly corrupt and archaic voting system in the 19th century, with Reform Acts in 1832, 1867, and 1884. The Industrial Revolution empowered the middle cla...

parsing
In grammar, the analysis of words according to their function in a sentence. From the Latin pars (part), parsing is to state what is the function or part of speech of each word, phrase, or clause in the sentence

parable
Genre of allegorical narrative of real or fictitious events from which a moral is drawn

Padova
Italian name for Padua, a town in Veneto, northern Italy

Patra
Greek name for Patras, a city in the northwestern Peloponnese region of Greece

Parnassos
Greek name for Parnassus, a mountain in central Greece

paritta
In Buddhism, the chanting of 29 sutras of Pali scripture by monks. The paritta accompanies many Buddhist ceremonies, such as a marriage or naming ceremony, as a blessing and healing rite. The text emphasizes the showing of metta (loving kindness) to potential carriers of threat or danger. While the text is read, the monk may sit under a specially d...

particle theory
Concept that all matter is made up of particles. Elements are made up of particles called atoms. Atoms are built up from three types of particle: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Other types of particles in matter are molecules and ions. A molecule is a small group of atoms that are held together by covalent bonds. An ion is a charged particle...

Palm OS
Computer operating system designed for Palm Pilot palmtop computers. The Palm OS provides handwriting recognition on a touch-sensitive screen and was once the most widely used palmtop operating system; Pocket PC subsequently caught up with it. Palmtop computers became popular due to their simplicity, expandability, mobility, and wearability...

particle board
Board manufactured by gluing small flakes or pieces of timber together under pressure. Chipboard is perhaps the best known, but other examples include flakeboard (used to board up damaged windows and doorways) and waferboard. Particle board may be covered in a plastic veneer and used for specialist surfaces

Pa
In physics, symbol for pascal, the SI unit of pressure, equal to a pressure of one newton per square metre

País Vasco
Spanish name for the Basque Country, an autonomous region of Spain

PC
Abbreviation for personal computer; politically correct; police constable; Privy Councillor

PCP
Abbreviation for phencyclidine hydrochloride, a drug popularly known as angel dust

PDF
In computing, file format created by Adobe's Acrobat system that retains the entire content of an electronic document (including layouts, graphics, styled text, and navigation features) regardless of the computer system on which it is viewed. Because they are platform-independent, PDF files are often an effective way to send documents over ...

peony
Any of a group of perennial plants native to Europe, Asia, and North America, remarkable for their large, round, brilliant white, pink, or red flowers. Most popular in gardens are the common peony (P. officinalis), the white peony (P. lactiflora), and the taller tree peony (P. suffruticosa). ...

pecan
Nut-producing hickory tree (C. illinoensis or C. pecan), native to the central USA and northern Mexico and now widely cultivated. The trees grow to over 45 m/150 ft, and the edible nuts are smooth-shelled, the kernel resembling a smooth, oval walnut. (Genus Carya, family Juglandac...

pelargonium
Any of a group of shrubby, tender flowering plants belonging to the geranium family, grown extensively for their colourful white, pink, scarlet, and black-purple flowers. They are the familiar summer bedding and pot `geraniums`. Ancestors of the garden hybrids came from southern Africa. (Genus Pelargonium, family Ge...

peat
Click images to enlargeOrganic matter found in bogs and formed by the incomplete decomposition of plants such as sphagnum moss. Northern Asia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, and other places have large deposits, which have been dried and used as fuel from ancient times. Peat can also be used as a soil additive. Peat bogs began...

pear
Succulent, gritty-textured edible fruit of the pear tree, native to temperate regions of Europe and Asia. White flowers precede the fruits, which have a greenish-yellow and brown skin and taper towards the stalk. Pear trees are cultivated for their fruit which are eaten fresh or canned; a wine known as perry is made from pear juice. (&l...

peanut
South American vinelike annual plant. After flowering, the flower stalks bend and force the pods into the earth to ripen underground. The nuts are a staple food in many tropical countries and are widely grown in the southern USA. They provide a valuable edible oil and are the basis for a large number...

peach
Yellow-reddish round edible fruit of the peach tree, which is cultivated for its fruit in temperate regions and has oval leaves and small, usually pink, flowers. The fruits have thick velvety skins; nectarines are a smooth-skinned variety. (Prunus persica, family Rosaceae.)

pea
Climbing leguminous plant (see legume) with pods of round green edible seeds, grown since prehistoric times for food. The pea is a popular vegetable and is eaten fresh, canned, frozen, or dried. The sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) of the same family is grown for its scented red, purple, pink, and white butterfly-shaped flowers&...

Peiraias
Port of both ancient and modern Athens and main port of Greece, on the Gulf of Aegina; population (2001 est) 193,400. Peiraias is situated in the west of the district of Attica, about 5 km/3 mi from the centre of Athens. Much of Athens's industry is located at Peiraias and the city is a major settlement. The port is a busy transit locat...

Petrograd
Former name (1914–24) of St Petersburg, a city in Russia. It adopted this Russian-style name as a patriotic gesture at the outbreak of World War I, but was renamed Leningrad on the death of the USSR's first leader

peyote
Spineless cactus of northern Mexico and the southwestern USA. It has white or pink flowers. Its buttonlike tops contain mescaline, which causes hallucinations and is used by American Indians in religious ceremonies. (Lophopora williamsii, family Cactaceae.)

Petrie,
(William Matthew) English archaeologist who excavated sites in Egypt (the pyramids at El Gîza, the temple at Tanis, the Greek city of Naucratis in the Nile delta, Tell el Amarna, Naqada, Abydos, and Memphis) and Palestine from 1880. He was knighted in 1923

Petra
Ancient city carved out of the red rock at a site in Jordan, on the eastern slopes of the Wadi el Araba, 90 km/56 mi south of the Dead Sea. An Edomite stronghold and capital of the Nabataeans in the 2nd century, it was captured by the Roman emperor Trajan in 106 and destroyed by the Arabs in the ...

Petrarch
Italian poet, humanist, and leader of the revival of classical learning. His Il canzoniere/Songbook (also known as Rime Sparse/Scattered Lyrics) contains madrigals, songs, and sonnets in praise of his idealized love, `Laura`, whom he first saw in 1327 (she was a married woman and refused to be...

petition of right
In British law, the procedure whereby, before the passing of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947, a subject petitioned for legal relief against the crown, for example for money due under a contract, or for property of which the crown had taken possession. An example is the petition of right presented by Parliament and accepted by Charles I in 1628, decl...

Peterloo massacre
The events in St Peter's Fields in Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when an open-air meeting in support of parliamentary reform was charged by yeomanry (voluntary cavalry soldiers) and hussars (regular cavalry soldiers). Eleven people were killed and 500 wounded. The name was given in analogy with the Battle of Waterloo. The well-...

Peter
(I) Tsar of Russia from 1682 on the death of his half-brother Tsar Feodor III; he took full control of the government in 1689. He attempted to reorganize the country on Western lines. He modernized the army, had a modern fleet built, remodelled the administrative and legal systems, enc...

Peterborough
(UK city) City in eastern England, on the River Nene, 64 km/40 mi northeast of Northampton, and from April 1998 administrative headquarters of Peterborough unitary authority; population (2001) 136,100. Situated on the edge of the Fens in the centre of an agricultural area, it is one of...

Peter, St
Christian martyr, the author of two Epistles in the New Testament and leader of the apostles. Peter is regarded as the first bishop of Rome, whose position the pope inherits directly through apostolic succession. His real name was Simon, but he was renamed Peter (from the Greek petros `rock`) after Jesus nicknamed him K...

Peshawar
Capital of North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, 18 km/11 mi east of the Khyber Pass and 72 km/107 mi west of Islamabad, on the Bara River; population (1998) 982,800, (2007 calc) 1,288,500. The Khyber Pass provides the easiest route between the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan, and the city grew to importance as the long-es...

Perugia
(town) Capital of Umbria, Italy, 520 m/1,700 ft above the River Tiber, about 137 km/85 mi north of Rome; population (2001) 149,100. Textiles, liqueurs, and chocolate are produced. One of the 12 cities of the ancient country of Etruria, it surrendered to Rome in 309 BC. There is a u...

Perth
(Australia) Capital of the state of Western Australia and Australia's fourth-largest city; population (2001 est) 1,340,000. Perth is situated on the southwest coast of Australia, on the River Swan, 19 km/12 mi inland. Its port is at Fremantle, to the southwest at the mouth of t...

Perth
(Scotland) Town and administrative headquarters of Perth and Kinross, central Scotland, on the River Tay, 70 km/43 mi northwest of Edinburgh; population (2001) 43,450. It is known as the `fair city`. Industries include dyeing, textiles, whisky distilling, and light engineerin...

Persian art
Click images to enlargeThe arts of Persia (now Iran) from the 6th century BC. Subject to invasions from both east and west, Persia has over the centuries blended many influences to create a rich diversity of arts, styles, and techniques. Persian art is particularly noted for its architecture and production of exquisite mi...

Persepolis
Ancient royal city of the Persian Empire, 65 km/40 mi northeast of Shiraz. It was burned down after its capture in 331 BC by Alexander the Great

Persephone
In Greek mythology, the goddess and queen of the underworld; the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of agriculture. She was carried off to the underworld by Pluto, also known as Hades, although Zeus later ordered that she should spend six months of the year above ground with her mother. The myth symbolizes the growth and decay of vegetation ...

Perrault, Charles
French writer who published a collection of fairy tales, Contes de ma mère l'oye/Mother Goose's Fairy Tales (1697). These are based on traditional stories and include `The Sleeping Beauty`, `Little Red Riding Hood`, `Blue Beard`, `Puss in Boots`, and `Cinderella`

Perpendicular
Period of English Gothic architecture lasting from the end of the 14th century to the mid-16th century. It is characterized by window tracery consisting chiefly of vertical members, two or four arc arches, lavishly decorated vaults, and the use of traceried panels. Examples include the choir, transepts, and cloister of Gloucester Cathedral (abo...

Perón, Juan Domingo
Argentine politician, dictator 1946–55 and from 1973 until his death. His populist appeal to the poor was enhanced by the charisma and political work of his second wife Eva (`Evita`) Perón. After her death in 1952 his popularity waned and, with increasing economic difficulties and labour unrest, he was deposed in a military coup...

Perm
(city) Capital city, economic and cultural centre of Perm oblast (region), in the west-central Russian Federation, in the southern foothills of the Urals; population (2002) 1,001,700. Perm, which lies on the River Kama 475 km/295 mi northeast of Kazan, is a major centre of commerce...