17-letter words containing h, s, a, m, p
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- peaches and cream — If you say that a woman or a girl has a peaches and cream complexion, you mean that she has very clear, smooth, pale skin.
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
- physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
- plains of abraham — a high plain adjoining the city of Quebec, Canada: battlefield where the English under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in 1759.
- ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
- sandwich compound — any of a class of organometallic compounds whose molecules have a metal atom or ion bound between two plane parallel organic rings
- schematic capture — The process of entering the logical design of an electronic circuit into a CAE system by creating a schematic representation of components and interconnections.
- schwedler's maple — a variety of the Norway maple, Acer platanoides schwedleri, producing red leaves that subsequently turn green.
- semi-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- semisophisticated — somewhat sophisticated.
- september weather — weather characteristic of the month of September, esp in being unpredictable as summer is ending and autumn is beginning
- sexual dimorphism — the condition in which the males and females in a species are morphologically different, as with many birds.
- shuttle diplomacy — diplomatic negotiations carried out by a mediator who travels back and forth between the negotiating parties.
- south sea company — a British joint stock company that traded in South America in the 18th century. The South Sea Company took over the national debt in return for a monopoly of trade with the South Seas, causing feverish speculation in their stocks, and a financial crash in 1720 (the South Sea Bubble)
- southampton water — an inlet of the English Channel in S England
- spiny-headed worm — any of a small group of endoparasites of the phylum Acanthocephala, as larvae parasitic in insects and crustaceans and as adults in various vertebrates.
- spongy parenchyma — the lower layer of the ground tissue of a leaf, characteristically containing irregularly shaped cells with relatively few chloroplasts and large intercellular spaces.
- steamship company — a company which has a fleet of steamships
- stymphalian birds — a flock of predacious birds of Arcadia that were driven away and killed by Hercules as one of his labors.
- support mechanism — any formal system or method of providing support or assistance
- swash plate motor — a collar or face plate on a shaft that is inclined at an oblique angle to the axis of rotation and converts reciprocating motion to rotation
- sympathetic magic — magic predicated on the belief that one thing or event can affect another at a distance as a consequence of a sympathetic connection between them.
- telephone message — a message that is transmitted by telephone
- the metamorphosis — a short story (1915) by Franz Kafka.
- the mississippian — the Mississippian period or rock system equivalent to the lower Carboniferous of Europe
- the primrose path — a pleasurable way of life
- the-metamorphosis — a short story (1915) by Franz Kafka.
- thermal expansion — expansion caused by heat
- thiopental sodium — a barbiturate, C 11 H 18 N 2 NaO 2 S, used as an anesthetic in surgery and, in psychiatry, for narcoanalysis and to stimulate recall of past events.
- transdermal patch — a small piece of material used to mend a tear or break, to cover a hole, or to strengthen a weak place: patches at the elbows of a sports jacket.
- ultrametamorphism — metamorphism during which the temperature of a rock exceeds its melting point.
- unsympathetically — in a manner that is not characterized by feeling or showing sympathy
- varix lymphaticus — a similar condition affecting an artery or lymphatic vessel
- well-accomplished — completed; done; effected: an accomplished fact.