16-letter words containing o, s, n, a, b
- put in mothballs — to postpone work on (a project, activity, etc)
- questionableness — The state or condition of being questionable; dubiousness.
- rack one's brain — If you rack your brains, you try very hard to think of something.
- rainbow seaperch — an embiotocid fish, Hypsurus caryi, living off the Pacific coast of North America, having red, orange, and blue stripes on the body.
- raise an eyebrow — If something causes you to raise an eyebrow or to raise your eyebrows, it causes you to feel surprised or disapproving.
- rambunctiousness — difficult to control or handle; wildly boisterous: a rambunctious child.
- reasonable doubt — law: grounds for believing sb is innocent
- 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
- redistributional — a distribution performed again or anew.
- reserve buoyancy — the difference between the volume of a hull below the designed waterline and the volume of the hull below the lowest opening incapable of being made watertight.
- robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
- sandlot baseball — a form of baseball played by children on an area of vacant ground
- santiago de cuba — a region in Ecuador, E of the Andes: the border long disputed by Peru.
- save one's bacon — the back and sides of the hog, salted and dried or smoked, usually sliced thin and fried for food.
- school librarian — a librarian who works in or is in charge of a school library
- sebaceous glands — any of the cutaneous glands that secrete oily matter for lubricating hair and skin.
- self-abandonment — absence or lack of personal restraint.
- self-approbation — approval; commendation.
- self-elaboration — an act or instance of elaborating.
- self-lubrication — the process of becoming lubricated without external factors
- self-observation — an act or instance of noticing or perceiving.
- self-subjugation — the act, fact, or process of subjugating, or bringing under control; enslavement: The subjugation of the American Indians happened across the country.
- semi-hibernation — Zoology. to spend the winter in close quarters in a dormant condition, as bears and certain other animals. Compare estivate.
- 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.
- simeon ben yohai — flourished 2nd century a.d, Palestinian rabbi.
- simon boccanegra — an opera (1857) by Giuseppe Verdi.
- slap on the back — to congratulate
- smooth breathing — a symbol (') used in the writing of Greek to indicate that the initial vowel over which it is placed is unaspirated.
- sodium carbonate — Also called soda ash. an anhydrous, grayish-white, odorless, water-soluble powder, Na 2 CO 3 , usually obtained by the Solvay process and containing about 1 percent of impurities consisting of sulfates, chlorides, and bicarbonates of sodium: used in the manufacture of glass, ceramics, soaps, paper, petroleum products, sodium salts, as a cleanser, for bleaching, and in water treatment.
- soft brown sugar — a type of moist sugar made by coating white sugar with dark molasses
- sole beneficiary — the only beneficiary
- sounding balloon — a balloon carrying instruments aloft to make atmospheric measurements, especially a radiosonde balloon.
- southern baptist — a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, founded in Augusta, Georgia, in 1845, that is strictly Calvinistic and active in religious publishing and education.
- st. john's-bread — carob (def 2).
- stationary orbit — an orbit lying in, or approximately in, the plane of the equator for which the orbital period is equal to the spin period of the central body
- strawberry blond — reddish blond.
- subcartilaginous — partially or incompletely cartilaginous.
- subjectification — to make subjective.
- subordinationism — the doctrine that the first person of the Holy Trinity is superior to the second, and the second superior to the third.
- sulfocarbanilide — thiocarbanilide.
- swamp buttonwood — the buttonbush.
- swedenborgianism — of or relating to Emanuel Swedenborg, his religious doctrines, or the body of followers adhering to these doctrines and constituting the Church of the New Jerusalem, or New Church.
- tablets of stone — Stone is used in expressions such as set in stone and tablets of stone to suggest that an idea or rule is firm and fixed, and cannot be changed.
- tell one's beads — a small, usually round object of glass, wood, stone, or the like with a hole through it, often strung with others of its kind in necklaces, rosaries, etc.
- the amazon basin — the catchment area of the River Amazon
- the eastern bloc — (formerly) the Soviet bloc
- the unobservable — something that cannot be observed
- to mean business — If you say that someone means business, you mean they are serious and determined about what they are doing.
- tobacco industry — business of selling smoking products
- transport number — that fraction of the total electric current that anions and cations carry in passing through an electrolytic solution.