17-letter words containing o, s, m, u, n
- performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
- performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
- pernicious anemia — Pernicious anemia is a very severe blood disease.
- personal computer — a compact computer that uses a microprocessor and is designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games. Abbreviation: PC.
- photoluminescence — luminescence induced by the absorption of infrared radiation, visible light, or ultraviolet radiation.
- ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
- potassium cyanide — a white, granular, water-soluble, poisonous powder, KCN, having a faint almondlike odor, used chiefly in metallurgy and photography.
- potassium nitrate — a crystalline compound, KNO 3 , produced by nitrification in soil, and used in gunpowders, fertilizers, and preservatives; saltpeter; niter.
- production system — (programming) A production system consists of a collection of productions (rules), a working memory of facts and an algorithm, known as forward chaining, for producing new facts from old. A rule becomes eligible to "fire" when its conditions match some set of elements currently in working memory. A conflict resolution strategy determines which of several eligible rules (the conflict set) fires next. A condition is a list of symbols which represent constants, which must be matched exactly; variables which bind to the thing they match and "<> symbol" which matches a field not equal to symbol. Example production systems are OPS5, CLIPS, flex.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- radioluminescence — luminescence induced by nuclear radiation.
- reconstructionism — a 20th-century movement among U.S. Jews, founded by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, advocating that Judaism, being a culture and way of life as well as a religion, is in sum a religious civilization requiring constant adaptation to contemporary conditions so that Jews can identify more readily and meaningfully with the Jewish community.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- 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)
- samurai tradition — the body of customs, thought, practices, etc belonging to the samurai warrior caste of Japan
- sanctimoniousness — making a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, righteousness, etc.: They resented his sanctimonious comments on immorality in America.
- sanctum sanctorum — the holy of holies of the Biblical tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem.
- sandringham house — a residence of the royal family, in Sandringham, a village in E England, in Norfolk near the E shore of the Wash
- sandwich compound — any of a class of organometallic compounds whose molecules have a metal atom or ion bound between two plane parallel organic rings
- sawatch mountains — range of the Rocky Mountains, in central Colo.: highest peak, Elbert
- selkirk mountains — a mountain range in SW Canada, in SE British Columbia. Highest peak: Mount Sir Sandford, 3533 m (11 590 ft)
- senatus consultum — a decree of the senate of ancient Rome.
- settlement houses — the act or state of settling or the state of being settled.
- smoothing circuit — a circuit used to remove ripple from the output of a direct current power supply
- snowmass mountain — a mountain in W central Colorado, in the Elk Mountains, in the S Rocky Mountains: ski resorts. 14,092 feet (4295 meters).
- sodium propionate — a transparent, crystalline, water-soluble powder, C 3 H 5 NaO 2 , used in foodstuffs to prevent mold growth, and in medicine as a fungicide.
- sound effects man — a man who produces sounds artificially or reproduces them from a recording, etc, to create a theatrical effect, such as the bringing together of two halves of a hollow coconut shell to simulate a horse's gallop. Such sound effects are used in plays, films, etc
- sound spectrogram — a graphic representation, produced by a sound spectrograph, of the frequency, intensity, duration, and variation with time of the resonance of a sound or series of sounds.
- south farmingdale — a town on central Long Island, in SE New York.
- 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
- spatial summation — the act or process of summing.
- sperrin mountains — a mountain range in NW Northern Ireland
- spot announcement — a brief radio or television announcement, usually an advertisement, made by an individual station during or after a network program.
- stand-up comedian — performer: tells jokes
- statutory meeting — company shareholders' discussion
- stir one's stumps — to move or become active
- storm in a teacup — a violent fuss or disturbance over a trivial matter
- stretch limousine — a limousine that has been lengthened to provide extra seating accommodation and more legroom
- suction lipectomy — the removal of fatty tissue by making a small incision in the skin, loosening the fat layer, and withdrawing it by suction.
- sudetes mountains — mountain range along the borders of N Czech Republic & SW Poland: highest peak, 5,259 ft (1,603 m)
- sunbury-on-thames — a town in SE England, in N Surrey. Pop: 27 415 (2001)
- super-nationalism — an extreme or fanatical loyalty or devotion to a nation.
- superaerodynamics — the branch of aerodynamics that deals with gases at very low densities.
- superalimentation — nourishment; nutrition.
- supercolumniation — the placing of one order of columns above another.
- supernova remnant — an expanding shell of gas, with accompanying strong radio and x-ray emissions, produced by a supernova.
- support mechanism — any formal system or method of providing support or assistance
- supra-nationalism — outside or beyond the authority of one national government, as a project or policy that is planned and controlled by a group of nations.