16-letter words containing a, c, i, s
- strait-lacedness — the state or quality of being strait-laced
- strange particle — any elementary particle with a strangeness quantum number other than zero.
- street christian — (especially in the 1960s) a Christian whose religious life centers more in social or communal groups than in institutional churches.
- strict liability — responsibility for damage or loss regardless of intention or culpability
- strike a balance — compromise
- string orchestra — an orchestra consisting only of violins, violas, cellos, and double basses
- student teaching — the act of teaching in a school for a limited period under supervision as part of a course to qualify as a teacher
- studentification — the renting of particular accommodation exclusively to students
- subcartilaginous — partially or incompletely cartilaginous.
- subjectification — to make subjective.
- submarine chaser — a small patrol vessel, 100–200 feet (30–60 meters) long, designed for military operations against submarines.
- subsistence wage — the lowest wage upon which a worker and his or her family can survive
- subtropical high — one of several highs, as the Azores and Pacific highs, that prevail over the oceans at latitudes of about 30 degrees N and S. Also called subtropical anticyclone. Compare high (def 37).
- succession state — any of a number of usually new states that are established in or expand over the territory formerly ruled by one large state
- sulfocarbanilide — thiocarbanilide.
- sulu archipelago — an island group in the SW Philippines, separating the Sulawesi Sea from the Sulu Sea. 1086 sq. mi. (2813 sq. km). Capital: Jolo.
- summa theologica — a philosophical and theological work (1265–74) by St. Thomas Aquinas, consisting of an exposition of Christian doctrine.
- summer complaint — an acute condition of diarrhea, occurring during the hot summer months chiefly in infants and children, caused by bacterial contamination of food and associated with poor hygiene.
- superfecundation — the fertilization of two or more ova discharged at the same ovulation by successive acts of sexual intercourse.
- superficialities — being at, on, or near the surface: a superficial wound.
- superserviceable — overly disposed to be of service; officious.
- superunification — a theory intended to describe the electromagnetic force, the strong force, the weak force, and gravity as a single, unified force.
- supporting actor — performer: not lead
- surface integral — the limit, as the norm of the partition of a given surface into sections of area approaches zero, of the sum of the product of the areas times the value of a given function of three variables at some point on each section.
- surface-printing — planography.
- surveyor's chain — a series of objects connected one after the other, usually in the form of a series of metal rings passing through one another, used either for various purposes requiring a flexible tie with high tensile strength, as for hauling, supporting, or confining, or in various ornamental and decorative forms.
- symbolical books — the books containing the creeds, beliefs, or doctrine of religious groups that have emerged since the Reformation
- symmetric matrix — a matrix with the lower-left half equal to the mirror image of the upper-right half; a matrix that is its own transpose.
- syncategorematic — Traditional Logic. of or relating to a word that is part of a categorical proposition but is not a term, as all, some, is.
- sysdeco mimer ab — (company) Part of the international software group Sysdeco Group AS. They developed the MIMER RDBMS. Address: Uppsala, Sweden.
- system on a chip — A system on a chip combines most of a system's elements on a single integrated circuit or chip.
- systematic error — a persistent error that cannot be attributed to chance.
- systemic grammar — a grammar in which description is founded on the relationships among the various units at different ranks of a language, and in which language is viewed as a system of meaning-creating choices
- t-carrier system — (communications) A series of wideband digital data transmission formats originally developed by the Bell System and used in North America and Japan. The basic unit of the T-carrier system is the DS0, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one voice circuit. Originally the 1.544 megabit per second T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kilobit per second streams, leaving 8 kilobits per second of framing information which facilitates the synchronisation and demultiplexing at the receiver. T2 and T3 circuits channels carry multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 44.736 Mbps. The T-carrier system uses in-band signaling, resulting in lower transmission rates than the E-carrier system. It uses a restored polar signal with 303-type data stations. Asynchronous signals can be transmitted via a standard which encodes each change of level into three bits; two which indicate the time (within the current synchronous frame) at which the transition occurred, and the third which indicates the direction of the transition. Although wasteful of line bandwidth, such use is usually only over small distances. T1 lines are made free of direct current signal components by in effect capacitor coupling the signal at the transmitter and restoring that lost component with a "slicer" at the receiver, leading to the description "restored polar".
- take the biscuit — Take the biscuit means the same as take the cake.
- technical school — college of further and vocational education
- tension headache — a headache caused by muscle tension resulting from stress or overwork
- the fact remains — You say the fact remains that something is the case when you want to emphasize that the situation must be accepted.
- theatre-francais — Comédie Française.
- thermoplasticity — soft and pliable when heated, as some plastics, without any change of the inherent properties.
- thick as thieves — very close friends
- thioarsenic acid — any of three hypothetical acids, H3AsS4, HAsS3, and H4As2S7, known only in the forms of their salts
- thumbnail sketch — small preliminary drawing
- to call it quits — If you say that you are going to call it quits, you mean that you have decided to stop doing something or being involved in something.
- to coin a phrase — You say 'to coin a phrase' to show that you realize you are making a pun or using a cliché.
- to rest in peace — If you express the wish that a dead person may rest in peace, you are showing respect and sympathy for him or her. 'Rest in peace' or 'RIP' is also sometimes written on gravestones.
- to stake a claim — If you stake a claim, you say that something is yours or that you have a right to it.
- tobacco industry — business of selling smoking products
- topical-sentence — a sentence that expresses the essential idea of a paragraph or larger section, usually appearing at the beginning.
- topsail schooner — a sailing vessel fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts with square sails above the foresail, and often with a square sail before the foresail.