| potman | n. | pub worker who picks up empty glasses | British | |
| potter | v. | to busy oneself in a desultory manner to little or no effect; to waste time | British | |
| pottle | n. | former liquid measure equal to a half-gallon; vessel of this capacity | ||
| poulterer | n. | dealer in poultry (as well as hares and other small game) | ||
| pounce | n. | 1 | claw or talon of a bird | archaic |
| pounce | v. | 2 | to smooth with fine powder or pumice; to sprinkle with fine dust or powder | |
| pounce | v. | 3 | to beat, to grind, to bruise, to stab | |
| pourboire | n. | tip | ||
| pouter | n. | domestic pigeon, noted for puffing out its crop | ||
| prang | v. | to bomb; to crash | British | |
| prank | v. | to dress up, to bedeck | ||
| prate | v. | to speak overlong to little purpose | ||
| prebendary | n. | holder of a prebend, stipend for cathedral and church college canons | ||
| precentor | n. | one who leads choir or congregation in singing | ||
| preceptor | n. | teacher | ||
| precipitate | adj. | very sudden, abrupt, heedlessly quick; to make happen prematurely, to cause to suddenly occur; to hurl down | ||
| precipitous | adj. | steep | ||
| precisian | n. | Puritan, purist in religious matters; pedant, one adhering strictly to the rules | ||
| prehension | n. | grasping, act of taking hold | ||
| prelapsarian | adj. | of or pertaining to the time before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden; innocent and pristine; supralapsarian | ||
| prelate | n. | high-ranking ecclesiastic | ||
| prelest | n. | spiritual conceit, self-delusion in one’s own righteousness | ||
| prepossession | n. | opinion, bias, prejudice (esp. in a favorable sense) | ||
| prepotent | adj. | superior in power or authority; possessing genetic material more likely to predominate | ||
| presbyopia | n. | farsightedness, particularly that caused by old age | ||
| prescind | v. | to cut off; to separate in thought, to consider apart | ||
| preterist | n. | one who believes Apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible refer to events which have already occurred; devotee of the past | ||
| preterlabent | adj. | gliding or floating past | ||
| preterlapsed | adj. | past, bygone | ||
| pretermit | v. | to suspend or abandon (a customary action) | ||
| prevaricate | v. | to deviate from straightforwardness, hence a) to lie or evade the truth, or b) to transgress | ||
| prevenient | adj. | coming before in time, antecedent | ||
| prevent | v. | to come before, to precede | obsolete | |
| pricket | n. | spike upon which to stick a candle; buck in his second year | ||
| primeval | adj. | of or related to the first age of the world; ancient; primitive | ||
| primogeniture | n. | being the firstborn; inheritance through the eldest child (usu. the male) | ||
| prisiadka | n. | Slavic dance step in which from a squatting position the dancer kicks out first one and then the other leg | ||
| privet | n. | any one of several evergreen shrubs, commonly used for garden hedges | ||
| pro tanto | adv. | only to a given extent | Latin | |
| procreant | adj. | pertaining to procreation; generating, begetting | ||
| procrustean | adj. | producing conformity or uniformity through severe means without regard to natural variation | ||
| proctalgia | n. | rectal pain | ||
| proctorize | v. | to perform the duties of or to exercise the powers of a proctor (of a college or university) | ||
| prodromal | adj. | premonitory (symptom) | ||
| proem | n. | preface, preamble, introduction | ||
| prognathous | adj. | having protruding jaws | ||
| prolepsis | n. | 1 | marshaling counterarguments to a position so they may be refuted in advance | |
| prolepsis | n. | 2 | prochronism; placing something (person, event, etc.) at too early a date | |
| prolicide | n. | the murder of one’s child | ||
| promulge | v. | to set forth publicly, to publish |
