The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

polynomial-time algorithm

    A known algorithm (or Turing Machine) that is
   guaranteed to terminate within a number of steps which is a
   polynomial function of the size of the problem.

   See also computational complexity, exponential time,
   nondeterministic polynomial-time (NP), NP-complete.

   (1995-04-13)