20-letter words containing i, h, e, a
- satellite chromosome — a type of densely staining chromosome of uncertain biological function, found in many plant and animal species.
- satellite photograph — a photograph taken by an artificial satellite from space
- saxe-weimar-eisenach — a former grand duchy in Thuringia in central Germany.
- scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
- schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- schwarzschild sphere — the sphere which surrounds a non-rotating uncharged black hole, from within which no information can escape because of gravitational forces
- season ticket holder — a person who has a season ticket
- see the light of day — come into being
- see with half an eye — the organ of sight, in vertebrates typically one of a pair of spherical bodies contained in an orbit of the skull and in humans appearing externally as a dense, white, curved membrane, or sclera, surrounding a circular, colored portion, or iris, that is covered by a clear, curved membrane, or cornea, and in the center of which is an opening, or pupil, through which light passes to the retina.
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- serve a person right — to pay a person back, esp for wrongful or foolish treatment or behaviour
- set the ball rolling — to open or initiate (an action, discussion, movement, etc)
- settle accounts with — to pay or receive a balance due
- seven against thebes — (used with a plural verb) Classical Mythology. seven heroes, Amphiaraus, Capaneus, Eteoclus, Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, Polynices, and Tydeus, who led an expedition against Thebes to depose Eteocles in favor of his brother Polynices: the expedition failed, but the Epigoni, the sons of the Seven against Thebes, conquered the city ten years later.
- sex change operation — a surgical operation designed to change a person's physical sexual characteristics to those of the opposite sex
- shake in one's shoes — to tremble with fear or apprehension
- shank of the evening — the latter part of the afternoon
- shareholders' equity — Shareholders' equity is the total amount of ownership investment in a company.
- sharp-tailed sparrow — a sparrow, Ammospiza caudacuta, inhabiting salt marshes in North America, having narrow, sharply pointed tail feathers.
- shear transformation — a map of a coordinate space in which one coordinate is held fixed and the other coordinate or coordinates are shifted.
- shibah asar betammuz — Shivah Asar Betammuz.
- shivah asar betammuz — a Jewish fast day observed on the 17th day of Tammuz in memory of the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70.
- short back and sides — If a man has a short back and sides, his hair is cut very short at the back and sides with slightly thicker, longer hair on the top of the head.
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- silicon tetrahydride — silane (def 1).
- snow-on-the-mountain — a North American euphorbiaceous plant, Euphorbia marginata, having white-edged leaves and showy white bracts surrounding small flowers
- south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
- south atlantic ocean — the part of the Atlantic Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
- south orkney islands — an uninhabited group of islands in the S Atlantic, southeast of Cape Horn: formerly a dependency of the Falkland Islands; part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962 (claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty). Area: 621 sq km (240 sq miles)
- southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
- span of apprehension — the maximum number of objects that can be correctly assessed after a brief presentation
- spanish oyster plant — a composite plant, Scolymus hispanicus, of southern Europe, having spiny, thistlelike leaf margins, small yellow flowers, and an edible root.
- spanish west african — of or relating to the former Spanish overseas territory of Spanish West Africa (now the overseas provinces of Ifni and Spanish Sahara) or its inhabitants
- spanish-american war — the war between the U.S. and Spain in 1898.
- spatial technologies — (company) Distributors of the ACIS solid modelling engine.
- special relationship — the exceptionally close political, diplomatic, cultural and historical relations between the United States and the United Kingdom
- spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
- spherical coordinate — Usually, spherical coordinates. any of three coordinates used to locate a point in space by the length of its radius vector and the angles this vector makes with two perpendicular polar planes.
- spiral of archimedes — a curve that is the locus of a point that moves outward with uniform speed along a vector, beginning at the origin, while the vector rotates about the origin with uniform angular velocity. Equation (in polar coordinates): r = aθ.
- splice the mainbrace — to issue and partake of an extra allocation of alcoholic spirits
- stare sb in the face — If a situation or the answer to a problem is staring you in the face, it is very obvious, although you may not be immediately aware of it.
- state highway patrol — a state's road traffic police
- step into the breach — If you step into the breach, you do a job or task which someone else was supposed to do or has done in the past, because they are suddenly unable to do it.
- stochastic terrorism — the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted: The lone-wolf attack was apparently influenced by the rhetoric of stochastic terrorism.
- stoichiometric ratio — The stoichiometric ratio is the exact ratio between air and flammable gas or vapor at which complete combustion takes place.
- suitland-silver hill — a city in central Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
- switchboard operator — a person who operates an installation in a telephone exchange, office, hotel, etc, at which the interconnection of telephone lines is manually controlled
- synchronized skating — the art or sport of teams of up to twenty skaters holding onto each other and moving in patterns in time to music
- take into one's head — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.