14-letter words containing o, s, k, e
- oblique stroke — (character) "/". Common names include: (forward) slash; stroke; ITU-T: slant; oblique stroke. Rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; INTERCAL: slat. Commonly used as the division operator in programming, and to separate the components in Unix pathnames, and hence also in URLs. Also used to delimit regular expressions in several languages.
- omphaloskepsis — contemplation of one's navel as part of a mystical exercise.
- omphaloskeptic — One who contemplates or meditates upon one's navel; one who engages in omphaloscopy.
- on one's knees — Anatomy. the joint of the leg that allows for movement between the femur and tibia and is protected by the patella; the central area of the leg between the thigh and the lower leg.
- on tenterhooks — one of the hooks or bent nails that hold cloth stretched on a tenter.
- options market — a market in which options are traded
- orkney islands — group of islands north of Scotland, constituting an administrative division of Scotland: 377 sq mi (976 sq km); pop. 20,000
- oyster cracker — a small, round, usually salted cracker, served with oysters, soup, etc.
- ozone sickness — a condition characterized by chest pain, itchy eyes, and drowsiness, caused by exposure to ozone, as experienced in the atmospheres of smog and high-altitude airplanes.
- paddock-basher — a vehicle suited to driving on rough terrain
- parking sensor — A parking sensor is a device on a vehicle which detects obstacles and alerts the driver if the vehicle comes too close to them when being parked.
- passion killer — something that is sexually unattractive or inhibiting
- peacock's tail — a handsome brown seaweed, Padina pavonia (though coloured yellow-olive, red, and green) whose fan-shaped fronds have concentric bands of iridescent hairs
- peck's bad boy — the mischievous boy in a series of newspaper stories and collected volumes by the American newspaperman and humorist George Wilbur Peck (1840–1916).
- pembroke pines — a city in SE Florida, near Fort Lauderdale.
- penalty stroke — a stroke added to a score for a rule infraction.
- phosphate rock — phosphorite.
- pick one's way — to choose or select from among a group: to pick a contestant from the audience.
- pickled onions — onions which have been preserved in vinegar or brine
- play for keeps — to do something seriously and without showing any mercy
- poison hemlock — hemlock (defs 1, 3).
- pop one's cork — the outer bark of an oak, Quercus suber, of Mediterranean countries, used for making stoppers for bottles, floats, etc.
- post-breakfast — the first meal of the day; morning meal: A hearty breakfast was served at 7 a.m.
- profit-seeking — attempting to make a profit or financial gains
- quick response — fast reaction time
- rathke's pouch — an invagination of stomodeal ectoderm developing into the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
- reception desk — the front desk in a hotel where guests can books rooms or ask questions
- recovery stock — a security that has fallen in price but is believed to have the ability to recover
- removable disk — removable hard disk
- reservoir rock — rock that has sufficient porosity to contain accumulations of oil or gas.
- roanoke island — an island off the NE coast of North Carolina, S of Albemarle Sound: site of Raleigh's unsuccessful colonizing attempts 1585, 1587.
- roanoke rapids — a city in NE North Carolina.
- rock mechanics — the study of the mechanical behaviour of rocks, esp their strength, elasticity, permeability, porosity, density, and reaction to stress
- rocket science — rocketry.
- roller-skating — the act of moving on roller skates
- savanna monkey — any of several common, closely allied long-tailed monkeys of African savannas ranging from Senegal to South Africa, including the green monkey, grivet, tantalus, and vervet, which are sometimes considered subspecies and classified together as Cercopithecus aethiops.
- schlockmeister — a person who deals in or sells inferior or worthless goods; junk dealer.
- schoolies week — (in Australia) a week when large numbers of school leavers gather together for a holiday away from home after the end of their final exams
- schottky noise — shot effect.
- scratch monkey — (humour) As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
- sea of okhotsk — part of the NW Pacific, surrounded by the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin Island, and the E coast of Siberia. Area: 1 589 840 sq km (613 838 sq miles)
- self-knowledge — knowledge or understanding of oneself, one's character, abilities, motives, etc.
- self-mockingly — in a self-mocking manner
- self-reckoning — count; computation; calculation.
- sensor network — a network of tiny autonomous devices embedded in everyday objects or sprinkled on the ground, able to communicate using wireless links
- sheepback rock — roche moutonnée.
- shock absorber — a device for damping sudden and rapid motion, as the recoil of a spring-mounted object from shock.
- shooting brake — station wagon.
- skeleton draft — a basic or minimum draft or outline
- skeleton staff — the minimum staff needed by a company during a time where most staff do not normally work, such as a holiday, weekend, etc