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14-letter words containing e, s, k, a, r

  • roanoke island — an island off the NE coast of North Carolina, S of Albemarle Sound: site of Raleigh's unsuccessful colonizing attempts 1585, 1587.
  • roanoke rapids — a city in NE North Carolina.
  • rock mechanics — the study of the mechanical behaviour of rocks, esp their strength, elasticity, permeability, porosity, density, and reaction to stress
  • roller-skating — the act of moving on roller skates
  • russet burbank — a brown-skinned, oblong potato having a mealy flesh with high starch content.
  • sakha republic — an administrative division in E Russia, in NE Siberia on the Arctic Ocean: the coldest inhabited region of the world; it has rich mineral resources. Capital: Yakutsk. Pop: 948 100 (2002). Area: 3 103 200 sq km (1 197 760 sq miles)
  • salary bracket — a given range or bracket of salaries within which the amount of pay earned by someone falls
  • 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.
  • screen blanker — screen saver
  • sergeant baker — a large brightly-coloured fish of the genus Latropiscis, found in temperate reef waters of Australasia
  • serial killing — multiple killings or murders carried out by the same person or persons
  • serrated wrack — the seaweed Fucus serratus
  • shaker heights — a city in NE Ohio, near Cleveland.
  • shakespeareana — collected writings or items relating to Shakespeare
  • shark-infested — (of a body of water) known to contain large numbers of sharks, and therefore considered to be dangerous
  • sheepback rock — roche moutonnée.
  • shock absorber — a device for damping sudden and rapid motion, as the recoil of a spring-mounted object from shock.
  • shooting brake — station wagon.
  • shrink-wrapped — A shrink-wrapped product is sold in a tight covering of thin plastic.
  • siberian husky — one of a Siberian breed of medium-size dogs having a thick, soft coat, raised originally as sled dogs.
  • sick and tired — afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
  • sickle feather — one of the paired, elongated, sickle-shaped, middle feathers of the tail of the rooster.
  • silky anteater — an arboreal, tropical American anteater, Cyclopes didactylus, about the size of a rat, having a prehensile tail, glossy, golden fur, and two toes on each forelimb.
  • skeleton draft — a basic or minimum draft or outline
  • skilled labour — labour or work that demands skill and which you usually have to be trained for, or the workers that provide this labour
  • skull practice — a meeting for the purpose of discussion, exchange of ideas, solving problems, etc.
  • snake mackerel — an elongate, deep-sea fish, Gempylus serpens, inhabiting tropical and temperate seas, having jutting jaws and strong teeth.
  • social drinker — a person who drinks alcoholic beverages usually in the company of others and is in control of his or her drinking.
  • social network — a network of friends, colleagues, and other personal contacts: Strong social networks can encourage healthy behaviors.
  • sonderkommando — a group of prisoners assigned to collect belongings and dispose of the bodies of other prisoners who had died or been killed.
  • spark arrester — a device, consisting of wire netting or other material, used to stop or deflect sparks thrown from an open fireplace, a smokestack, or the like.
  • spark spectrum — a spectrum formed from the light produced by an electric spark, characteristic of the gas or vapor through which the spark passes.
  • sparkling wine — a wine that is naturally carbonated by a second fermentation.
  • speak well for — to say or indicate something favorable about
  • speaking terms — if you are on speaking terms with someone, you are quite friendly with them and often talk to them
  • spike lavender — a lavender, Lavandula latifolia, having spikes of pale-purple flowers, and yielding an oil used in painting.
  • square bracket — bracket (def 3).
  • squeak through — to succeed, get through, survive, etc. by a narrow margin or with difficulty
  • stalking horse — If you describe a person or thing as a stalking horse, you mean that it is being used to obtain a temporary advantage so that someone can get what they really want.
  • stalking-horse — a horse, or a figure of a horse, behind which a hunter hides in stalking game.
  • starch blocker — a substance ingested in the belief that it inhibits the body's ability to metabolize starch and thereby promotes weight loss: declared illegal in the U.S. by the FDA.
  • stay-in strike — sit-down strike.
  • steam cracking — Steam cracking is the main method of breaking down large molecules of hydrocarbons, in which a gaseous or liquid hydrocarbon is diluted with steam and then heated.
  • steamer basket — a gift basket of fruit, sweets, and the like, often including champagne, sent to a person departing on a trip, especially by ship.
  • stinking cedar — an evergreen tree, Torreya taxifolia, of the yew family, native to Florida, having rank-smelling foliage and dark-green, egg-shaped fruit.
  • stock in trade — the requisites for carrying on a business, especially goods kept on hand for sale in a store.
  • stock transfer — Stock transfer is the act of moving goods from one part of the distribution chain to another.
  • stock watering — the creation of more new shares in a company than is justified by its assets
  • stock-in-trade — items used in performing a job
  • stockbrokerage — a stockbroker's work or business
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