16-letter words containing o, a, r, s, m
- progress payment — an instalment of a larger payment made to a contractor for work carried out up to a specified stage of the job
- proslambanomenos — the lowest note of the scale in ancient Greek music
- proxime accessit — the person coming next after the winner in a competitive examination or an academic prize giving; runner-up
- pseudoparenchyma — (in certain fungi and red algae) a compact mass of tissue, made up of interwoven hyphae or filaments, that superficially resembles plant tissue.
- pullorum disease — a highly contagious, frequently fatal disease of young poultry caused by the bacterium Salmonella gallinarum (pullorum), transmitted by the infected hen during egg production, and characterized by weakness, loss of appetite, and diarrhea.
- quasi-commercial — of, relating to, or characteristic of commerce.
- quasi-compulsory — required; mandatory; obligatory: compulsory education.
- quasi-democratic — pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy.
- radioimmunoassay — a test procedure that integrates immunologic and radiolabeling techniques to measure minute quantities of a substance, as a protein, hormone, or drug, in a given sample of body fluid or tissue.
- radiosymmetrical — radially symmetrical.
- rambunctiousness — difficult to control or handle; wildly boisterous: a rambunctious child.
- recorded message — words spoken by someone and recorded electronically in order to be replayed again in future, esp automatically over the phone
- rectus abdominis — a long flat muscle that extends along the whole length of both sides of the abdomen. It flexes the vertebral column, particularly the lumbar portion; it also tenses the anterior abdominal wall and assists in compressing the abdominal contents
- replacement cost — fee to obtain new version of sth
- repossession man — someone employed to take back or repossess property, esp due to nonpayment of money due under a hire-purchase agreement
- residential home — a home with social-work supervision for people who need more than just housing accommodation, such as esp the elderly, and also children in care or mentally handicapped adults
- reverse mortgage — a type of home mortgage under which an elderly homeowner is allowed a long-term loan in the form of monthly payments against his or her paid-off equity as collateral, repayable when the home is eventually sold. Abbreviation: RAM.
- rhabdomyosarcoma — a malignant tumor made up of striated muscle tissue.
- root mean square — the square root of the arithmetic mean of the squares of the numbers in a given set of numbers. Abbreviation: rms.
- roskind grammars — (tool) Yacc-based parsers for C and C++ by Jim Roskind. It does not use the %prec and %assoc YACC features so conflicts are never hidden. The C grammar has only one shift-reduce conflict, the C++ grammar has a few more. With byacc it can produce graphical parse trees automatically. The C grammar conforms to ANSI C and the C++ grammar supports cfront 2.0 constructs.
- royal commission — (in Britain) a body set up by the monarch on the recommendation of the prime minister to gather information about the operation of existing laws or to investigate any social, educational, or other matter. The commission has prescribed terms of reference and reports to the government on how any change might be achieved
- saxo grammaticus — c1150–1206? Danish historian and poet.
- sclerenchymatous — supporting or protective tissue composed of thickened, dry, and hardened cells.
- second-story man — a burglar who enters through an upstairs window.
- secondary market — the market that exists for an issue after large blocks of shares have been publicly distributed.
- secondary modern — Secondary moderns were schools which existed until recently in Britain for children aged between about eleven and sixteen, where more attention was paid to practical skills and less to academic study than in a grammar school.
- secondary phloem — phloem derived from the cambium during secondary growth.
- sedimentary rock — rock formed from compacted minerals
- self-affirmation — the act or an instance of affirming; state of being affirmed.
- self-proclaiming — to announce or declare in an official or formal manner: to proclaim war.
- self-reformation — the act of reforming; state of being reformed.
- semi-hibernation — Zoology. to spend the winter in close quarters in a dormant condition, as bears and certain other animals. Compare estivate.
- semiconservative — disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
- semiprivate room — a hospital room shared by two people, typically with a curtain dividing the room and providing some privacy
- semiprofessional — actively engaged in some field or sport for pay but on a part-time basis: semiprofessional baseball players.
- severance motion — an application made to a judge or court for the division into separate parts of a joint estate, contract, etc
- shaker and mover — mover and shaker
- sharia-compliant — (of a product or service) produced or offered in accordance with the doctrines of the sharia
- shoemaker's shop — a shop where shoes are repaired, or made
- shoemaker-levy 9 — a comet that was captured into an orbit around Jupiter and later broke up, the fragments colliding with Jupiter in July 1995
- shotgun marriage — a wedding occasioned or precipitated by pregnancy.
- siberian mammoth — a shaggy-coated mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, that lived in cold regions across Eurasia and North America during the Ice Age, known from fossils, cave paintings, and well-preserved frozen carcasses.
- sidestream smoke — secondhand smoke.
- simon boccanegra — an opera (1857) by Giuseppe Verdi.
- simonyi, charles — Charles Simonyi
- slave labor camp — labor camp (def 1).
- slow metabolizer — A slow metabolizer is someone whose body is slow to break down, absorb, or use a particular substance.
- smooth breathing — a symbol (') used in the writing of Greek to indicate that the initial vowel over which it is placed is unaspirated.
- soapberry family — the plant family Sapindaceae, characterized by chiefly tropical trees, shrubs, or herbaceous vines having compound leaves, clustered flowers, and berrylike, fleshy, or capsular fruit, and including the balloon vine, golden rain tree, litchi, and soapberry.
- social darwinism — a 19th-century theory, inspired by Darwinism, by which the social order is accounted as the product of natural selection of those persons best suited to existing living conditions and in accord with which a position of laissez-faire is advocated.