0%

14-letter words containing a, c, t, o, n, s

  • schoolteaching — the profession of a schoolteacher.
  • sclerotization — the state of being sclerotized.
  • scotch furnace — ore hearth.
  • scratch monkey — (humour)   As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
  • scrutinization — to examine in detail with careful or critical attention.
  • scsi initiator — (hardware)   A device that begins a SCSI transaction by issuing a command to another device (the SCSI target), giving it a task to perform. Typically a SCSI host adapter is the initiator but targets may also become initiators.
  • sectionization — the act or state of being sectionized
  • secularization — to make secular; separate from religious or spiritual connection or influences; make worldly or unspiritual; imbue with secularism.
  • securitization — the use of such securities as eurobonds to enable investors to lend directly to borrowers with a minimum of risk but without using banks as intermediaries
  • self-contained — containing in oneself or itself all that is necessary; independent.
  • semi-nocturnal — active at night (opposed to diurnal): nocturnal animals.
  • serbo-croatian — a Slavic language spoken in Serbia and Croatia, usually written with Cyrillic letters in Serbia but with Roman letters in Croatia.
  • sericitization — the process of transforming into sericite
  • serodiscordant — pertaining to a relationship with one HIV-positive partner and one HIV-negative partner.
  • shadow cabinet — (in the British Parliament) a group of prominent members of the opposition who are expected to hold positions in the cabinet when their party assumes power.
  • shalach manoth — the practice of giving gifts to one another or to the needy on Purim.
  • shooting match — a contest in marksmanship.
  • shouting match — a loud, often abusive quarrel or argument.
  • shower curtain — waterproof sheet around a shower
  • silent auction — an auction at which previously submitted written bids of prospective buyers are opened and compared, with each item being sold to the highest bidder.
  • simplification — to make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier: to simplify a problem.
  • slalom descent — a winding descent
  • smart sanction — a sanction intended to affect only a particular area of a country's activities or economy
  • smoking jacket — a loose-fitting jacket for men, often of a heavy fabric and trimmed with braid, worn indoors, especially as a lounging jacket.
  • social control — Sociology. the enforcement of conformity by society upon its members, either by law or by social pressure.
  • social network — a network of friends, colleagues, and other personal contacts: Strong social networks can encourage healthy behaviors.
  • social tagging — the practice of generating electronic tags or keywords by users rather than specialists as a way to classify and describe online content: Social tagging can enhance students' access to online collections of art.
  • socratic irony — pretended ignorance in discussion.
  • solar constant — the average rate at which radiant energy is received from the sun by the earth, equal to 1.94 small calories per minute per square centimeter of area perpendicular to the sun's rays, measured at a point outside the earth's atmosphere when the earth is at its mean distance from the sun.
  • solidification — to make solid; make into a hard or compact mass; change from a liquid or gaseous to a solid form.
  • somali current — a current of the Indian Ocean, flowing northward along the coast of Somalia in summer and southwestward the rest of the year.
  • son of a bitch — a contemptible or thoroughly disagreeable person; scoundrel.
  • sophisticating — a sophisticated person.
  • sophistication — sophisticated character, ideas, tastes, or ways as the result of education, worldly experience, etc.: the sophistication of the wealthy.
  • sorting tracks — the part of a railroad yard used for the final sorting of cars from a classification yard.
  • south american — a continent in the S part of the Western Hemisphere. About 6,900,000 sq. mi. (17,871,000 sq. km).
  • south carolina — a state in the SE United States, on the Atlantic coast. 31,055 sq. mi. (80,430 sq. km). Capital: Columbia. Abbreviation: SC (for use with zip code), S.C.
  • southern ocean — that part of the Indian Ocean south of Australia
  • specialisation — the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work: Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
  • specialization — the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work: Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
  • spinthariscope — an instrument that detects ionizing radiation by picking up sparks of light from alpha particles.
  • spironolactone — a steroid, C 2 4 H 3 2 O 4 S, used in combination with other drugs as a diuretic and antihypertensive.
  • spitting cobra — any cobra or cobralike snake, especially the ringhals, that sprays venom at the eyes of approaching animals.
  • staff discount — a discount off goods sold by a particular shop, given to members of staff of that shop
  • staghorn coral — staghorn coral.
  • staghorn sumac — a sumac, Rhus typhina, of eastern North America, having leaves that turn scarlet, orange, and purple in the autumn.
  • standard score — the test score of a participant expressed as the deviation of the score from the mean score of the sample in units of standard deviation.
  • starting block — a device used by runners, especially sprinters, for increasing their speed off the mark, consisting of a metal or wooden frame, usually secured to the ground at both ends, with adjustable, triangular-shaped blocks on each side for bracing the feet.
  • state function — a thermodynamic quantity that has definite values for given states of a system, such as entropy, enthalpy, free energy, etc
  • station church — any of the churches in Rome that have been used from ancient times as points of assembly for religious processions
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?