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14-letter words containing c, h, e, y, n, s

  • psychic energy — according to Freud, the force that lies behind all mental processes, having its basic source as the id.
  • psychic income — the personal or subjective benefits, rewards, or satisfactions derived from a job or undertaking as separate from its objective or financial ones.
  • psychoanalyses — a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of conscious and unconscious psychological processes.
  • psychogenetics — the study of internal or mental states
  • psychoneurosis — neurosis (def 1).
  • psychotechnics — the use of psychological techniques for controlling and modifying human behavior, especially for practical ends.
  • rhythm section — band instruments, as drums or bass, that supply rhythm rather than harmony or melody.
  • schottky noise — shot effect.
  • 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.
  • surinam cherry — a tropical American tree, Eugenia uniflora, of the myrtle family, having ovate leaves and fragrant, white flowers.
  • symphonic poem — a form of tone poem, scored for a symphony orchestra, in which a literary or pictorial “plot” is treated with considerable program detail: originated by Franz Liszt in the mid-19th century and developed especially by Richard Strauss.
  • synchronoscope — synchroscope.
  • synthetic fuel — fuel in the form of liquid or gas (synthetic natural gas) manufactured from coal or in the form of oil extracted from shale or tar sands.
  • thermodynamics — the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy or work, and the conversion of one into the other: modern thermodynamics deals with the properties of systems for the description of which temperature is a necessary coordinate.
  • treasury bench — (in Britain) the front bench to the right of the Speaker in the House of Commons, traditionally reserved for members of the Government
  • tymshare, inc. — (company)   The US company that created the TYMNET network.
  • unhysterically — in a way that does not show or suggest any hysteria; calmly; rationally
  • unmetaphysical — (of a statement or theory) not metaphysical or abstract
  • unsynchronized — to cause to indicate the same time, as one timepiece with another: Synchronize your watches.
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