18-letter words containing a, s, k, n
- skin friction drag — aerodynamic resistance or drag due to the contact of moving air with the surface of an airplane, a glider, etc.
- skinny-rib sweater — a tight-fitting ribbed woollen jumper or pullover
- slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
- snake in the grass — a treacherous person, especially one who feigns friendship.
- snakes and ladders — Snakes and ladders is a British children's game played with a board and dice. When you go up a ladder, you progress quickly. When you go down a snake, you go backwards.
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
- software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
- south saskatchewan — a river in W Canada, flowing E from S Alberta and joining the North Saskatchewan River to form the Saskatchewan River. 865 miles (1392 km) long.
- spackling compound — spackle
- stinking chamomile — mayweed.
- strike an attitude — to assume a posture or pose, often an affected or theatrical one
- swartkrans ape-man — the fossil remains of the extinct hominid Australopithecus robustus, found at Swartkrans, Republic of South Africa: formerly classified in the genus Paranthropus.
- take a shine to sb — If you say that someone has taken a shine to another person, you mean that he or she liked them very much at their first meeting.
- take one's chances — to accept the uncertain outcome as of a course of action
- take out insurance — take out insurance against something
- take sth in stride — If you take a problem or difficulty in stride, you deal with it calmly and easily.
- take to one's legs — to run away
- talk between ships — TBS (def 1).
- tardive dyskinesia — a disorder characterized by restlessness and involuntary rolling of the tongue or twitching of the face, trunk, or limbs, usually occurring as a complication of long-term therapy with antipsychotic drugs.
- task control block — (architecture) An MVS control block used to communicate information about tasks within an address space that are connected to an MVS subsystem such as MQSeries for MVS/ESA or CICS.
- the black and tans — a specially recruited armed auxiliary police force sent to Ireland in 1921 by the British Government to combat Sinn Féin
- the masurian lakes — a group of lakes in Masuria in NE Poland: scene of Russian defeats by the Germans (1914, 1915) during World War I
- thorfinn karlsefni — 980–after 1007, Icelandic navigator, explorer, and leader of early colonizing expedition to Vinland, in North America.
- timber rattlesnake — a rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus horridus, of the eastern U.S., usually having the body marked with dark crossbands.
- to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
- to pick and choose — If you pick and choose, you carefully choose only things that you really want and reject the others.
- to speak your mind — If you speak your mind, you say firmly and honestly what you think about a situation, even if this may offend or upset people.
- transmission brake — A transmission brake is a brake that operates on the transmission system of a vehicle rather than directly on the wheels.
- turn one's back on — the rear part of the human body, extending from the neck to the lower end of the spine.
- virginia snakeroot — any of various plants whose roots have been regarded as a remedy for snakebites, as the herb Aristolochia serpentaria (Virginia snakeroot) having a medicinal rhizome and rootlets, and the white-flowered Polygala senega (Seneca snakeroot) having a medicinal root.
- war risk insurance — life insurance for members of the armed forces.
- water stick insect — a slender sticklike flightless water bug, Ranatra linearis, that is predatory on small creatures such as water fleas
- watson-crick model — a widely accepted model for the three-dimensional structure of DNA, featuring a double-helix configuration for the molecule's two hydrogen-bonded complementary polynucleotide strands.
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.
- western meadowlark — any of several American songbirds of the genus Sturnella, of the family Icteridae, especially S. magna (eastern meadowlark) and S. neglecta (western meadowlark) having a brownish and black back and wings and a yellow breast, noted for their clear, tuneful song.
- westinghouse brake — a railroad air brake operated by compressed air.
- work one's ass off — work extremely hard