12-letter words containing a, d, p, i, s
- reemphasized — to give emphasis to; lay stress upon; stress: to emphasize a point; to emphasize the eyes with mascara.
- respondentia — a loan upon a ship's cargo, which is repaid with interest if the ship reaches its destination, and if the ship does not, the loan is not repaid
- saddle point — a point at which a function of two variables has partial derivatives equal to zero but at which the function has neither a maximum nor a minimum value.
- safe-deposit — providing safekeeping for valuables: a safe-deposit vault.
- sago pudding — a sweet pudding made with sago and milk
- sand springs — a town in NE Oklahoma.
- sandpainting — a type of painting done by American Indians, esp in the healing ceremonies of the Navaho, using fine coloured sand on a neutral ground
- sandpapering — the act or process of polishing or grinding a surface with or as if with sandpaper
- sapindaceous — belonging to the Sapindaceae, the soapberry family of plants.
- scouring pad — a small pad, as of steel wool or plastic mesh, used for scouring pots, pans, etc.
- scratchpad i — (language) A general-purpose language originally for interactive symbolic mathematics by Richard Jenks, Barry Trager, Stephen M. Watt and Robert S. Sutor of IBM Research, ca 1971. It features abstract parametrised data types, multiple inheritance and polymorphism. There were implementations for VM/CMS and AIX.
- scsi adaptor — (hardware) (Or "host adaptor") A device that communicates between a computer and its SCSI peripherals. The SCSI adaptor is usually assigned SCSI ID 7. It is often a separate card that is connected to the computer's bus (e.g. PCI, ISA, PCMCIA) though increasinly, SCSI adaptors are built in to the motherboard. Apart from being cheaper, busses like PCI are too slow to keep up with the newer SCSI standards like Ultra SCSI and Ultra-Wide SCSI. There are several varieties of SCSI (and their connectors) and an adaptor will not support them all. The performance of SCSI devices is limited by the speed of the SCSI adaptor and its connection to the computer. An adaptor that plugs into a parallel port is unlikely to be as fast as one incorporated into a motherboard. Fast adaptors use DMA or bus mastering. Some SCSI adaptors include a BIOS to allow PCs to boot from a SCSI hard disk, if their own BIOS supports it. Note that it is not a "SCSI controller" - it does not control the devices, and "SCSI interface" is redundant - the "I" of "SCSI" stands for "interface".
- seed capital — small sum invested in new business
- send packing — to dismiss peremptorily
- shadow price — the calculated price of a good or service for which no market price exists
- sharp-witted — having or showing mental acuity; intellectually discerning; acute.
- siderography — the art or technique of engraving on steel.
- sindonophany — the periodic exhibiting to the public of the shroud that the body of Christ is thought to have been wrapped in
- slap dashing — slab dashing.
- snake-hipped — having thin, sinuous hips.
- spade guinea — a guinea decorated with a spade-shaped shield, coined during the reign of George III
- span loading — the act of a person or thing that loads.
- spearheading — the sharp-pointed head that forms the piercing end of a spear.
- speed dating — an organized social event in which participants have one-on-one conversations typically limited to less than ten minutes, for the purpose of meeting people they would like to date.
- speedballing — the practice of taking cocaine and heroin together intravenously
- speedboating — the act, practice, or sport of traveling in a speedboat.
- speedskating — a form of ice skating in which contestants race against each other or the clock over various distances
- spermaticide — spermicide.
- spermatocide — spermicide.
- spermatozoid — a motile male gamete produced in an antheridium.
- spider plant — Also called ribbon plant. a plant, Chlorophytum comosum, of the lily family, native to southern Africa, that has long, narrow leaves and clusters of white flowers and is widely cultivated as a houseplant.
- spina bifida — a congenital neural tube defect in which part of the meninges or spinal cord protrudes through the spinal column, often resulting in neurological impairment.
- spinal fluid — cerebrospinal fluid
- spiny lizard — any of numerous iguanid lizards of the genus Sceloporus, common in North and Central America, usually having keeled scales that may end in a sharp point.
- spiral-bound — having a spiral binding.
- spit-roasted — cooked on a spit
- sporadically — (of similar things or occurrences) appearing or happening at irregular intervals in time; occasional: sporadic renewals of enthusiasm.
- spotted tail — (Sinte-galeshka) 1833?–81, Brulé Sioux leader.
- spud-bashing — the task of peeling potatoes, given as a punishment
- standing cup — a tall decorative cup of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, having a raised cover.
- standpattism — belief in or the practice of resisting or refusing to accept change, especially in politics.
- stride piano — a style of jazz piano playing in which the right hand plays the melody while the left hand plays a single bass note or octave on the strong beat and a chord on the weak beat, developed in Harlem during the 1920s, partly from ragtime piano playing.
- striped bass — an important American game fish, Morone saxatilis, having blackish stripes along each side.
- subduplicate — of the square root of ratios
- subepidermal — just below the epidermis or skin
- sudoriparous — producing or secreting sweat.
- suicide pact — an agreement between two or more people to commit suicide together.
- sulphadoxine — an antibiotic drug of the sulphonamide group, commonly used in combination with pyrimethamine to treat malaria, and in combination with various drugs to treat certain infections
- sulphonamide — any of a class of organic compounds that are amides of sulphonic acids containing the group –SO2NH2 or a group derived from this. An important class of sulphonamides are the sulfa drugs
- superordinal — relating to the superorder