18-letter words containing e, s, m
- surveyor's compass — an instrument used by surveyors for measuring azimuths.
- surveyor's measure — a system of units of length used in surveying land, based on the surveyor's chain of 66 feet (20.12 meters) and its 100 links of 7.92 inches (20.12 cm).
- survival mechanism — something you or your body does automatically, in order to survive in a dangerous or unpleasant situation
- swarm intelligence — the collective behaviour of a group of animals, esp social insects such as ants, bees, and termites, that are each following very basic rules
- 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.
- swedish gymnastics — a system of passive and active exercising of muscles and joints
- swim with the tide — to conform to prevailing opinion
- symbolist movement — a movement beginning in French and Belgian poetry towards the end of the 19th century with the verse of Mallarmé, Valéry, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Maeterlinck, and others, and seeking to express states of mind rather than objective reality by making use of the power of words and images to suggest as well as denote
- symmetric function — a polynomial in several indeterminates that stays the same under any permutation of the indeterminates.
- sympathetic strike — sympathy strike.
- sympathetic string — a thin wire string, as in various obsolete musical instruments, designed to vibrate sympathetically with the bowed or plucked strings to reinforce the sound.
- symphony orchestra — a large orchestra composed of wind, string, and percussion instruments and organized to perform symphonic compositions.
- synthetic geometry — elementary geometry, as distinct from analytic geometry.
- system-programming — a program, as an operating system, compiler, or utility program, that controls some aspect of the operation of a computer (opposed to application program).
- systematic phoneme — a phonological unit in generative phonology representing an underlying form that takes into account the relationship between phonological patterns and morphological variation, as the unit underlying the second vowel in both derive and derivative.
- systems programmer — a person whose job is to program systems software
- tan someone's hide — to convert (a hide) into leather, especially by soaking or steeping in a bath prepared from tanbark or synthetically.
- telecommunications — Sometimes, telecommunication. (used with a singular verb) the transmission of information, as words, sounds, or images, usually over great distances, in the form of electromagnetic signals, as by telegraph, telephone, radio, or television.
- television company — a company that broadcasts programmes by television
- temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
- temporary hardness — hardness of water due to the presence of magnesium and calcium hydrogencarbonates, which can be precipitated as carbonates by boiling
- terms of reference — Terms of reference are the instructions given to someone when they are asked to consider or investigate a particular subject, telling them what they must deal with and what they can ignore.
- testamentary trust — a trust set up under the terms of a will.
- the bottomless pit — the underworld; hell
- the damage is done — If you say 'the damage is done', you mean that it is too late now to prevent the harmful effects of something that has already happened.
- the dismal science — a name for economics coined by Thomas Carlyle
- the hunger marches — a number of processions by unemployed workers in the 1930s to protest against unemployment and deprivation
- the lords temporal — (in Britain) peers other than bishops in their capacity as members of the House of Lords
- the magnolia state — a nickname referring to Mississippi
- 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
- the middle passage — the journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the W coast of Africa to the Caribbean: the longest part of the journey of the slave ships sailing to the Caribbean or the Americas
- the mosque of omar — the mosque in Jerusalem, Israel, built in 691 ad by caliph 'Abd al-Malik: the third most holy place of Islam; stands on the Temple Mount alongside the al-Aqsa mosque
- the mountain state — a nickname referring to West Virginia
- the movie industry — the industry that makes entertainment films or movies
- the palmetto state — a nickname for South Carolina
- the same old story — the familiar or regular course of events
- the three wise men — the wise men from the east who came to do homage to the infant Jesus
- the uncircumcision — the gentiles
- the welsh assembly — the elected assembly for Wales, based in Cardiff, that has certain powers devolved from the UK government
- the-master-builder — a play (1892) by Ibsen.
- thermoluminescence — phosphorescence produced by the heating of a substance.
- thomas alva edison — Thomas Alva [al-vuh] /ˈæl və/ (Show IPA), 1847–1931, U.S. inventor, especially of electrical devices.
- timber rattlesnake — a rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus horridus, of the eastern U.S., usually having the body marked with dark crossbands.
- time of one's life — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
- to close your mind — If you close your mind to something, you deliberately do not think about it or pay attention to it.
- to come unstitched — to go wrong or awry
- to cut the mustard — If someone does not cut the mustard, their work or their performance is not as good as it should be or as good as it is expected to be.
- to raise the alarm — If you raise the alarm or sound the alarm, you warn people of danger.
- 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.
- toyotomi hideyoshi — Toyotomi [taw-yaw-taw-mee] /ˈtɔ yɔˈtɔ mi/ (Show IPA), 1536–98, Japanese general and statesman: prime minister and dictator of Japan 1585–98.