14-letter words containing c, o, k, m, a
- ockham's razor — Occam's razor.
- omphaloskeptic — One who contemplates or meditates upon one's navel; one who engages in omphaloscopy.
- promenade deck — an upper deck or part of a deck on a passenger ship where passengers can stroll, often covered with a light shade deck.
- rock formation — rock that is arranged or formed in a certain way
- rock mechanics — the study of the mechanical behaviour of rocks, esp their strength, elasticity, permeability, porosity, density, and reaction to stress
- 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.
- smoked haddock — haddock that has been cured by treating with smoke
- smoking jacket — a loose-fitting jacket for men, often of a heavy fabric and trimmed with braid, worn indoors, especially as a lounging jacket.
- sockeye salmon — an important food fish, Oncorhynchus nerka, inhabiting the North Pacific.
- stocking frame — a type of knitting machine
- to make a face — If you make a face, you show a feeling such as dislike or disgust by putting an exaggerated expression on your face, for example by sticking out your tongue. In British English, you can also say pull a face.
- tomato ketchup — sauce made from tomatoes
- work placement — temporary job, internship