20-letter words containing h, u, g, s
- pay through the nose — the part of the face or facial region in humans and certain animals that contains the nostrils and the organs of smell and functions as the usual passageway for air in respiration: in humans it is a prominence in the center of the face formed of bone and cartilage, serving also to modify or modulate the voice.
- physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
- posted write-through — A cache with a posted write-through policy (e.g. Intel 80386) delays the write-back to main memory until the bus is not in use.
- pseudo-psychological — of or relating to psychology.
- pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
- quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
- repurchase agreement — a contract between a dealer, as a bank, and an investor, whereby the investor purchases securities with the promise that they will be bought back by the dealer on a designated date, for which the investor receives a fixed return.
- rough-winged swallow — either of two New World swallows of the genus Stelgidopteryx, having outer primary feathers with small barblike hooks on the margins.
- scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
- scavenger's daughter — an instrument of torture that doubled over and squeezed the body so strongly and violently that blood was brought forth from the ears and nose: invented in 16th-century England.
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- shifting cultivation — a land-use system, esp in tropical Africa, in which a tract of land is cultivated until its fertility diminishes, when it is abandoned until this is restored naturally
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- size-weight illusion — a standard sense illusion that a small object is heavier than a large object of the same weight
- slip through the net — If criminals slip through the net, they avoid being caught by the system or trap that was meant to catch them.
- soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
- sound-and-light show — a nighttime spectacle or performance, at which a building, historic site, etc., is illuminated and the historic significance is imparted to spectators by means of narration, sound effects, and music.
- straight-cut tobacco — tobacco that is cut in such a way that it will lie flat.
- the (great) unwashed — The unwashed or the great unwashed is a way of referring to poor or ordinary people.
- the founding fathers — any of the men who were members of the U.S. Constituional Convention of 1787
- the garment industry — the manufacturing of items of clothing
- the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
- the naughty nineties — (in Britain) the 1890s, considered to be a period of fun-loving and laxity, esp in sexual morals
- the thousand guineas — an annual horse race, restricted to fillies, run at Newmarket since 1814
- thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
- to give sb their due — You can say 'to give him his due', or 'giving him his due' when you are admitting that there are some good things about someone, even though there are things that you do not like about them.
- to give up the ghost — If someone gives up the ghost, they stop trying to do something because they no longer believe they can do it successfully. If a machine gives up the ghost, it stops working.
- to put sth to rights — to make something consistent with justice, correctness, or orderly arrangement
- tubing head pressure — The tubing head pressure is the pressure on the tubing, which is measured at the wellhead.
- under/below strength — If an army or team is under strength or below strength, it does not have all the members that it needs or usually has.
- visual merchandising — Visual merchandising is the use of attractive displays and floor plans to increase customer numbers and sales volumes.
- weights and measures — units or standards of measurement
- your marching orders — If you give someone their marching orders, you tell them that you no longer want or need them, for example as your employee or as your lover.
- yu-shiang whole fish — /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ An obsolete name for the Greek character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII code 9, Unicode glyph 0x0263) which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not parsed) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce. Used primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.