14-letter words containing a, r, o, y, s
- rna polymerase — an enzyme that synthesizes the formation of RNA from a DNA template during transcription.
- road stability — the extent to which a motor vehicle is stable and does not skid, esp at high speeds, or on sharp bends or wet roads
- rotary shutter — a camera shutter consisting of a rotating disk pierced with a slit that passes in front of the lens to expose the film or plate.
- royal highness — a title used prior to 1917 and designating a brother, sister, child, grandchild, aunt, or uncle belonging to the male line of the royal family. a title used since 1917 and designating a child or grandchild of the sovereign. any person given this title by the Crown.
- royal standard — a flag bearing the arms of the British sovereign, flown only when she (or he) is present
- rsa encryption — (cryptography, algorithm) A public-key cryptosystem for both encryption and authentication, invented in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. Its name comes from their initials. The RSA algorithm works as follows. Take two large prime numbers, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1), and find its reciprocal mod (p-1)(q-1), and call this d. Thus ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n, e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n, e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA.
- saccharomycete — a single-celled yeast of the family Saccharomycetaceae, having no mycelium.
- sacred history — history that is retold with the aim of instilling religious faith and which may or may not be founded on fact
- sacrilegiously — pertaining to or involving sacrilege: sacrilegious practices.
- sacrococcygeal — relating to the sacrum and the coccyx
- safety officer — The safety officer in a company or an organization is the person who is responsible for the safety of the people who work or visit there.
- salvation army — an international Christian organization founded in England in 1865 by William Booth, organized along quasi-military lines and devoted chiefly to evangelism and to providing social services, especially to the poor.
- sanitary towel — sanitary napkin.
- satisfactorily — giving or affording satisfaction; fulfilling all demands or requirements: a satisfactory solution.
- sauropterygian — any of various Mesozoic marine reptiles of the superorder Sauropterygia, including the suborder Plesiosauria.
- school library — a library within a school where teachers and students have access to books and other resources
- 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.
- sea gooseberry — a comb jelly, especially of the genus Pleurobrachia.
- secondary beam — a beam of particles of one kind selected from the group of particles produced when a beam of particles from an accelerator (primary beam) strikes a target.
- secondary cell — storage cell.
- secondary gain — any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness (distinguished from primary gain).
- secondary road — a road less important than a main road or highway.
- secondary wall — the innermost part of a plant cell wall, deposited after the wall has ceased to increase in surface area.
- secondary wave — a transverse earthquake wave that travels through the interior of the earth and is usually the second conspicuous wave to reach a seismograph.
- self-laudatory — containing or expressing praise: overwhelmed by the speaker's laudatory remarks.
- self-parodying — given to or involving self-parody
- sergiyev posad — a city in the NW Russian Federation in Europe, NE of Moscow.
- seronegativity — the quality or state of being seronegative
- seward's folly — the purchase of Alaska in 1867, through the negotiations of Secretary of State W. H. Seward.
- shooting party — a social gathering when people shoot game together
- shrove tuesday — the last day of Shrovetide, long observed as a season of merrymaking before Lent.
- sinistrorsally — in a sinistrorsal manner
- slaughterously — murderously
- slurry reactor — A slurry reactor is a reactor in which contact is achieved by suspending a solid in a liquid.
- sobriety coach — a person who is employed to help another to refrain from drinking alcohol
- social history — a view of historical events seen in terms of social trends
- socratic irony — pretended ignorance in discussion.
- solar activity — the sum of all variable and short-lived disturbances on the sun, as sunspots, prominences, and solar flares.
- solitary vireo — a vireo, Vireo solitarius, of North and Central America, having the top and sides of the head bluish-gray.
- solvay process — a process for manufacturing sodium carbonate whereby a concentrated solution of sodium chloride is saturated with ammonia, carbon dioxide is passed through it, and the product is calcined.
- south ayrshire — a council area of SW Scotland, on the Firth of Clyde: comprises the S part of the historical county of Ayrshire; formerly part of Strathclyde Region (1975–96): chiefly agricultural, with fishing and tourism. Administrative centre: Ayr. Pop: 111 580 (2003 est). Area: 1202 sq km (464 sq miles)
- south-easterly — A south-easterly point, area, or direction is to the south-east or towards the south-east.
- spectra yellow — a vivid yellow color.
- sphaerocrystal — a spherical crystalline mass
- st. marylebone — former metropolitan borough of London: since 1965, part of Westminster
- stagflationary — of, caused by, or relating to, stagflation
- standard money — money made of a metal that has utility and value apart from its use as a unit of monetary exchange.
- start-up money — money that is spent on setting up a new business or other project
- state attorney — (in judicial proceedings) the legal representative of the state.
- statutory body — a body set up by the government to consider evidence and make judgements in some field of activity