21-letter words containing a, k, e, n
- ilya ilyich mechnikov — Élie [French ey-lee] /French eɪˈli/ (Show IPA), (Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov) 1845–1916, Russian zoologist and bacteriologist in France: Nobel Prize in medicine 1908.
- insulin shock therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- it takes two to tango — If you say it takes two or it takes two to tango, you mean that a situation or argument involves two people and they are both therefore responsible for it.
- jobseeker's allowance — (in Britain) a National Insurance or social security payment for unemployed people; replaced unemployment benefit in 1996
- keep one's nose clean — the part of the face or facial region in humans and certain animals that contains the nostrils and the organs of smell and functions as the usual passageway for air in respiration: in humans it is a prominence in the center of the face formed of bone and cartilage, serving also to modify or modulate the voice.
- keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
- kekule von stradonitz — Friedrich August [free-drikh ou-goo st] /ˈfri drɪx ˈaʊ gʊst/ (Show IPA), 1829–96, German chemist.
- keto-enol tautomerism — tautomerism in which the tautomers are an enol and a keto form. The change occurs by transfer of a hydrogen atom within the molecule
- keyboard send receive — (hardware) (KSR) Part of a designation for a hard-copy terminal, manufactured by Teletype Corporation. The KSR range were lower cost versions of the ASR models.
- kicking and screaming — If you say that someone is dragged kicking and screaming into a particular course of action, you are emphasizing that they are very unwilling to do what they are being made to do.
- lexical decision task — an experimental task in which subjects have to decide as fast as possible whether a given letter string is a word
- like a shag on a rock — abandoned and alone
- look to one's laurels — any tree of the genus Laurus.
- luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- make (both) ends meet — to manage to keep one's expenses within one's income
- make a convenience of — to take advantage of; impose upon
- make a pig of oneself — If you say that someone is making a pig of themselves, you are criticizing them for eating a very large amount at one meal.
- make one's blood boil — the fluid that circulates in the principal vascular system of human beings and other vertebrates, in humans consisting of plasma in which the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets are suspended.
- make one's gorge rise — a narrow cleft with steep, rocky walls, especially one through which a stream runs.
- make one's peace with — the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.
- marketing arrangement — an agreement between a seller and a buyer or between sellers about some aspect of the sale of products
- mask read-only memory — (storage) (MROM) A kind of ROM in which the memory contents are determined by one of the masks used to manufacture the integrated circuit. MROM can give high storage density (bits per millimeter squared) making it a cheap solution for high volume applications.
- mauna kea observatory — an astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, situated at an altitude of 13,600 feet (4145 meters).
- meter-kilogram-second — of or relating to the system of units in which the meter, kilogram, and second are the principal units of length, mass, and time. Abbreviation: mks, MKS.
- multi-level marketing — Multi-level marketing is a marketing technique which involves people buying a product, then earning a commission by selling it to their friends. The abbreviation MLM is also used.
- national park service — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1916, that administers national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreational areas.
- network administrator — (job) A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.
- packed encoding rules — (protocol, standard) (PER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing a compact transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1, defined in 1994. PER provides a much more compact encoding then BER. It tries to represents the data units using the minimum number of bits. The compactness requires that the decoder knows the complete abstract syntax of the data structure to be decoded, however. Documents: ITU-T X.691, ISO 8825-2.
- pick someone's brains — to obtain information or ideas from someone
- ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
- poke borak at someone — to jeer at someone
- protestant work ethic — work ethic.
- put someone's back up — to annoy someone
- rap over the knuckles — to reprimand
- reckless endangerment — a crime whereby a person behaves in a reckless manner which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person
- redwood national park — a national park in N California: redwood forest with some of the world's tallest trees. 172 sq. mi. (445 sq. km).
- rocky mountain oyster — mountain oyster.
- s-k reduction machine — An abstract machine defined by Professor David Turner to evaluate combinator expressions represented as binary graphs. Named after the two basic combinators, S and K.
- safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
- scarlet monkey flower — any of various plants belonging to the genus Mimulus, of the figwort family, as M. cardinalis (scarlet monkey flower) having spotted flowers that resemble a face.
- sequoia national park — a national park in central California: giant sequoia trees. 604 sq. mi. (1565 sq. km).
- share and share alike — with each having an equal share
- sick to one's stomach — afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
- skeleton at the feast — a person or event that brings gloom or sadness to an occasion of joy or celebration
- spark ignition engine — A spark ignition engine is an engine running on the Otto cycle.
- stick in one's throat — to be difficult, or against one's conscience, for one to accept, utter, or believe
- stock list department — (in an American stock exchange) the department dealing with monitoring compliance with its listing requirements and rules
- stokes-adams syndrome — unconsciousness accompanying atrioventricular heart block, sometimes characterized by weakness, irregular pulse, and intermittent convulsive or nonconvulsive seizures.
- take off one's hat to — a shaped covering for the head, usually with a crown and brim, especially for wear outdoors.