18-letter words containing h, o, p, e, s
- shoot from the hip — the act of shooting with a bow, firearm, etc.
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
- slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
- slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
- sodium hyposulfite — sodium thiosulfate.
- something to spare — a surplus of something
- sonic depth finder — a sonar instrument that uses echolocation to measure depths under water.
- sound spectrograph — an electronic device for recording a sound spectogram.
- spaghetti junction — an interchange, usually between motorways, in which there are a large number of underpasses and overpasses and intersecting roads used by a large volume of high-speed traffic
- spanish succession — War of thea war (1701-14) between European powers disputing the succession to the Spanish throne
- 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.
- spike-tooth harrow — a harrow equipped with straight teeth on horizontal bars, usually employed to smooth and level plowed soil or seedbeds for planting or sowing.
- spotted flycatcher — a European woodland songbird, Muscicapa striata, with a greyish-brown streaked plumage: family Muscicapidae (Old World flycatchers)
- spur-of-the-moment — occurring or done without advance preparation or deliberation; extemporaneous; unplanned: a spur-of-the-moment decision.
- superstring theory — any supersymmetric string theory in which each type of elementary particle is treated as a vibration of a single fundamental string (superstring) at a particular frequency.
- supportive therapy — any treatment, such as the intravenous administration of certain fluids, designed to reinforce or sustain the physiological well-being of a patient
- symphony orchestra — a large orchestra composed of wind, string, and percussion instruments and organized to perform symphonic compositions.
- 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.
- take the wraps off — to reveal
- telephone sex line — a telephone line operated by a phone-sex worker that offers phone sex to paying customers
- temporary hardness — hardness of water due to the presence of magnesium and calcium hydrogencarbonates, which can be precipitated as carbonates by boiling
- the bottomless pit — the underworld; hell
- the encyclopedists — the writers of the French Encyclopedia (1751-72) edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, which contained the advanced ideas of the period
- the heavens opened — it started pouring with rain
- the lords temporal — (in Britain) peers other than bishops in their capacity as members of the House of Lords
- the palmetto state — a nickname for South Carolina
- the powers that be — You can refer to people in authority as the powers that be, especially when you want to say that you disagree with them or do not understand what they say or do.
- to learn the ropes — If you are learning the ropes, you are learning how a particular task or job is done.
- to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
- to pick and choose — If you pick and choose, you carefully choose only things that you really want and reject the others.
- to spill the beans — If you spill the beans, you tell someone something that people have been trying to keep secret.
- to sweep the board — If someone sweeps the board in a competition or election, they win nearly everything that it is possible to win.
- to watch your step — If someone tells you to watch your step, they are warning you to be careful about how you behave or what you say so that you do not get into trouble.
- up to the eyeballs — You use up to the eyeballs to emphasize that someone is in an undesirable state to a very great degree.
- warehouse capacity — the amount of storage space in a warehouse
- white iron pyrites — marcasite
- white-spotted hyla — a type of tree frog (H. leucophyllata) of tropical America
- wilson's phalarope — a phalarope, Phalaropus tricolor, that breeds in the prairie regions of North America and winters in Argentina and Chile.
- wireless telephone — Now Rare. radiotelephony.
- wireless telephony — Now Rare. radiotelephony.
- working hypothesis — See under hypothesis (def 1).