PEOPLE n. 7 definitions
number of men and women; folks; population, or part of population; as, country people; -- sometimes used as an indefinite subject or verb, like on in French, and man in German; as, people in adversity. People were tempted to lend by great premiums. Swift . People have lived twenty-four days upon nothing but water. Arbu…
PER prep.
rding to individuals; per curiam, by the court; per se, by itself, of itself. Per is also sometimes used with English words. Per annum, by the year; in each successive year; annually. -- Per cent, Per centum, by the hundred; in the hundred; -- used esp. of proportions of ingredients, rate or amount of interest, and th…
PERIGEE; PERIGEUM n.
in the orbit of the moon which is nearest to the earth; -- opposed to Ant: apogee. It is sometimes, but rarely, used of the nearest points of other orbits, as of a comet, a planet, etc. Called also epigee, epigeum.
PETROLEUM n.
e of products, including benzine and ligroin. The terms petroleum ether, and naphtha, are sometimes applied to the still more volatile products, including rhigolene, gasoline, cymogene, etc.
PHOSPHORUS n. 3 definitions
; -- so called because this property was discovered by a resident of Bologna. The term is sometimes applied to other compounds having similar properties. -- Metallic phosphorus (Chem.), an allotropic modification of phosphorus, obtained as a gray metallic crystalline substance, having very inert chemical properties. I…