18-letter words containing g, r, o, s
- rufous hummingbird — a reddish-brown hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus, of western North America.
- safety regulations — regulations or rules that are put in place to ensure a product, event, etc, is safe and not dangerous
- saint george's day — April 23, celebrated in parts of the British Commonwealth in honor of the patron saint of Britain and especially in New Zealand as a bank holiday.
- saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
- school of motoring — a centre where people pay for lessons to learn to drive
- seafloor spreading — a process in which new ocean floor is created as molten material from the earth's mantle rises in margins between plates or ridges and spreads out.
- second-degree burn — a burned place or area: a burn where fire had ripped through the forest.
- secondary diagonal — a diagonal line or plane.
- secondary offering — the sale of a large block of outstanding stock off the floor of an exchange, usually by a major stockholder.
- self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- self-glorification — a glorified or more splendid form of something.
- self-gratification — the act of pleasing or satisfying oneself, especially the gratifying of one's own impulses, needs, or desires.
- self-interrogation — the act of interrogating; questioning.
- self-raising flour — flour with baking powder
- senior high school — a school attended after junior high school and usually consisting of grades 10 through 12.
- shaggy dog (story) — a long, rambling joke, typically involving ludicrously unreal or irrational behavior and usually having an irrelevant conclusion
- shatterproof glass — glass designed to resist shattering
- shift one's ground — to change one's argument or defense
- shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shugart associates — (company) The disk drive company, founded by Alan F. Shugart, which developed SCSI. Alan left Shugart Associates in 1974 [did he quit or was he fired?]. Shugart Associates was bought, and eventually shut down by Xerox.
- shugart technology — Seagate Technology
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- sir george gilbert — Barbara Ann, 1928–2012, Canadian figure skater.
- six-finger country — an isolated area considered as being inhabited by people who practise inbreeding
- sixth-form college — (in England and Wales) a college offering A-level and other courses to pupils over sixteen from local schools, esp from those that do not have sixth forms
- ski-mountaineering — a combination of the sports of skiing and mountaineering, for example by climbing up a mountain then skiing down it
- skin friction drag — aerodynamic resistance or drag due to the contact of moving air with the surface of an airplane, a glider, etc.
- slim hole drilling — Slim hole drilling is drilling a well in which at least 90 percent of the hole has a diameter of seven inches or less.
- sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
- social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- social engineering — the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems.
- societal marketing — marketing that takes into account society's long-term welfare
- sole-charge school — a rural school with only one teacher
- something or other — sth not remembered precisely
- something to spare — a surplus of something
- song without words — a song which only consists of a tune or melody and does not have any lyrics
- sound spectrograph — an electronic device for recording a sound spectogram.
- sow dragon's teeth — to take some action that is intended to prevent strife or trouble but that actually brings it about
- spectroheliography — the process of obtaining an image of the sun in light of a particular wavelength, such as calcium or hydrogen, showing the distribution of the element over the surface and in the solar atmosphere, using a spectroheliograph
- speech recognition — Computers. the computerized analysis of spoken words in order to identify the speaker, as in security systems, or to respond to voiced commands: the analysis is performed by finding patterns in the spectrum of the incoming sound and comparing them with stored patterns of elements of sound, as phones, or of complete words.
- spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
- spread one's wings — to make full use of one's abilities
- squinting modifier — a word or phrase that can modify either the words that precede it or those that follow, as frequently in the sentence Studying frequently is tedious.
- stand one's ground — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- stand-by generator — an electrical system which operates automatically in case the usual system malfunctions
- standard of living — a grade or level of subsistence and comfort in everyday life enjoyed by a community, class, or individual: The well-educated generally have a high standard of living.
- state of emergency — If a government or other authority declares a state of emergency in an area, it introduces special measures such as increased powers for the police or army, usually because of civil disorder or because of a natural disaster such as an earthquake.
- steering committee — a committee, especially of a deliberative or legislative body, charged with preparing the agenda of a session.
- stirling's formula — a relation that approximates the value of n factorial (n!), expressed as .