14-letter words containing c, h, o, m, s
- schoolmistress — a woman who presides over or teaches in a school.
- 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.
- second chamber — the parliament of the Netherlands, consisting of an upper chamber (First Chamber) and a lower chamber (Second Chamber)
- semito-hamitic — a former name for the Afro-Asiatic family of languages
- servomechanism — an electronic control system in which a hydraulic, pneumatic, or other type of controlling mechanism is actuated and controlled by a low-energy signal.
- sex chromosome — a chromosome, differing in shape or function from other chromosomes, that determines the sex of an individual.
- shalach manoth — the practice of giving gifts to one another or to the needy on Purim.
- ship's company — company (def 11).
- shooting match — a contest in marksmanship.
- shouting match — a loud, often abusive quarrel or argument.
- showbiz column — a column about the entertainment industry
- showplace home — a historic house
- simchath torah — a Jewish festival, celebrated on the 23rd day of Tishri, being the 9th day of Sukkoth, that marks the completion of the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah in the synagogue and the beginning of the new cycle.
- smoked haddock — haddock that has been cured by treating with smoke
- smoker's cough — a chronic cough caused by smoking.
- soil mechanics — the branch of civil engineering that deals with the mechanical behavior of soil and similar materials when they are compressed or sheared or when liquids flow through them.
- south american — a continent in the S part of the Western Hemisphere. About 6,900,000 sq. mi. (17,871,000 sq. km).
- sowing machine — a machine that scatters seeds on land so that they may grow
- spermatothecae — a female reproductive organ in some insects
- staghorn sumac — a sumac, Rhus typhina, of eastern North America, having leaves that turn scarlet, orange, and purple in the autumn.
- stereochemical — of, relating to, stereochemistry
- stoichiometric — of or relating to stoichiometry.
- stomachfulness — the quality of being stomachful
- subatmospheric — (of a quantity) having a value lower than that of the atmosphere: subatmospheric temperatures.
- summer clothes — light clothes which are suitable for summer
- 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.
- tetrachotomous — divided into four parts
- the mesolithic — the Mesolithic period; Middle Stone Age
- the omniscient — God
- thermoacoustic — pertaining to a method of cooling using air driven with acoustic power.
- thermochromism — a phenomenon in which certain dyes made from liquid crystals change colour reversibly when their temperature is changed
- 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.
- thomson effect — the tendency of unevenly heated segments of a strip of a conductor to increase or decrease in temperature differences when an electric current is passed through the strip.
- thromboplastic — causing or accelerating blood-clot formation.
- thymelaeaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Thymelaeaceae, a family of trees and shrubs having tough acrid bark and simple leaves: includes spurge laurel, leatherwood, and mezereon
- top-hat scheme — a pension scheme for the senior executives of an organization
- trachyspermous — having seeds with a rough coat.
- trichomoniasis — a sexually transmitted disease typically asymptomatic in men and resulting in vaginitis with a copious, frothy discharge and itching in women, caused by a trichomonad Trichomonas vaginalis.
- unaccomplished — not accomplished; incomplete or not carried out: Many tasks remain unaccomplished.
- voucher system — Accounting. a procedure for controlling disbursements by means of vouchers.
- witches'-besom — witches'-broom.
- witches'-broom — an abnormal, brushlike growth of small thin branches on woody plants, caused especially by fungi, viruses, and mistletoes.