One-Letter Words, a Dictionary (13 page)

P IN PRINT AND PROVERB

1. (phrase)
William Oxberry (1784–1824) was called
“the Five P’s” because he was a publisher, printer, poet, publican, and player.

2. (in literature)
“After she left, I mused for a few seconds on what is called in the medical profession the
‘p’ phenomenon: the tendency of starched nurses’ uniforms to make it seem as if all nurses were bountifully blessed in the bosom and this shaped like the letter ‘p.’”
—Luke Rhinehart,
The Dice Man

3. (in literature)
“I handed him two alphabet blocks and part of a half-eaten soda cracker. The howling ceased at once. He put the cracker in his mouth and banged the letter P against the plastic padding under him.”
—Sue Grafton,
P Is for Peril

4. (in literature)
As a gentle letter of the alphabet:
“He remembers, as a child, poring over the word rape in newspaper reports, trying to puzzle out what exactly it meant, wondering what the letter p, usually so gentle, was doing in the middle of a word held in such horror that no one would utter it aloud.”
—J. M. Coetzee,
Disgrace

5. (in literature)
As an antisocial letter of the alphabet:
“However, the letter P is much less friendly [than O and X]. It tends to lurk around just a few letters, and avoids 15 of them.”
—Simon Singh,
The Code Book:
The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

6. (in literature)
As the character of the bear in A.A.
Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories:
“‘It’s a Missage,’ he said to himself, ‘that’s what it is. And that letter is a “P,” and so is that, and so is that, and “P” means
“Pooh,” so it’s a very important Missage to me, and
I can’t read it.’”—The Complete Tales & Poems of
Winnie-the-Pooh

7. (in literature)
“P is a porter with a load on his back.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ
by Mel Gooding

8. (in film)
Alphabet Pam
is a short 2004 film by Eva
Saks about a little girl who has a passion for the letter P.
The film was created for the
Sesame Street
television program.

9.
n.
Behavior,
as in the phrase “mind your p’s and q’s.”
McQuade was too near his
d t’s
to be mindful of his
p’s
and
q’s.—O. Henry,
The Fifth Wheel

10.
n.
A written representation of the letter.
There, cut in half, was a symbol—barely noticeable because of the faded ink. But with the light from
Eugene’s desk lamp behind it, it stood out clear as day—the letter P with a lightning bolt running through it.
—Marshall Younger,
Mysteries in Odyssey #1: Case of the Mysterious Message
Half-way up the hill on a prominent lump of grey stone the size of a hayrick had been painted with a large, lop-sided letter P in scarlet paint, so that it was visible to any ship anchored in the lagoon.
—Wilbur A. Smith,
Blue Horizon

11.
n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproducing the letter.

12.
n.
Blind P:
the editorial symbol for a paragraph, i.e., ¶.

MISCELLANEOUS

13.
n.
Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant P means
“heart, centre, sunset.”
—Joseph E. Rael,
Tracks of
Dancing Light: A Native American Approach to
Understanding Your Name

14.
n.
The sixteenth letter of the alphabet.
The letter P, that broad, provocative expanse between O and Q, is one of the most ambivalent of all the twenty-six, for in it one finds pleasure and pain, peace and pandemonium, prosperity and poverty.
—James Thurber, “The Watchers of the Night”
Another fortunate terminologist hit upon the word
“psychical”—the p might be sounded or not, according to the taste and fancy of the pronouncer—and the fashionable children of a scientific age were thoroughly at ease.
—George Gissing,
The Private
Papers of Henry Ryecroft

15.
n.
The sixteenth in a series.

16.
n.
Something having the shape of a P.
Someone from the back would lean forward and say,
“You guys, I need a rest stop.” So then the driver would flash her lights and signal the other cars, and the entertainer would wave out the window and form her fingers into the shape of a P and everybody would get off at the next exit.
—Samantha Bennett,
Post-Gazette
Thread the nylon through the left (inactive) ring, pulling the cord through with your left hand. Let the resulting loop hang freely. Notice that it drops naturally into the letter P.
—New Skete Monks,
The
Art of Raising a Puppy

17.
n.
A Roman numeral for 400.

18.
n.
Something arbitrarily designated P
(e.g., a person, place, or other thing).

19.
n.
The sixteenth section in a piece of music.

20.
n.
A message-processing language.
P is a simple configuration language designed for specification of message processing instructions at application proxies. P can be used to instruct an intermediary how to manipulate the application message being proxied.
—Alex Rousskov, “P: Message Processing Language.”

21.
n.
P trap:
a plumbing fixture with a P-shaped curl installed below a sink and acting as a water door to trap sewer gases.
“Was it clogged?” “I dropped something down it,” she answered, digging around the P trap with her finger.
—Karin Slaughter,
Blindsighted

SCIENTIFIC MATTERS

22.
n.
A vitamin found in citrus and rose hips.
Vitamin P was first discovered in 1936 by Hungarian scientist Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who found it within the white of the rind in citrus fruits….
The letter P, for permeability factor, was given to this group of nutrients because they improve the capillary linings’ permeability and integrity—that is, the passage of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients through the capillary walls.
—Elson M. Haas, MD,
Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional
Medicine

23.
n.
(chemistry)
The symbol for the element phosphorous in the periodic table.

24.
n.
(logic)
A symbol used to represent an arbitrary proposition.
P, q, and r were used as propositional letters by Bertrand Russell in 1903 in The Principles of Mathematics.
—Jeff Miller, “Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols”