17-letter words containing p, a, r, i, s
- spenserian stanza — the stanza used by Spenser in his Faerie Queene and employed since by other poets, consisting of eight iambic pentameter lines and a final Alexandrine, with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbcc.
- sperrin mountains — a mountain range in NW Northern Ireland
- spherical polygon — a closed figure formed by arcs of great circles on a spherical surface.
- spiny-headed worm — any of a small group of endoparasites of the phylum Acanthocephala, as larvae parasitic in insects and crustaceans and as adults in various vertebrates.
- spiral bevel gear — a bevel gear having curved teeth tending to converge on the axis of rotation.
- spiritual bouquet — the spiritual presentation of a good work to another person.
- spiritual healing — faith healing
- split keyboarding — the act or practice of editing data from one terminal on another terminal
- split personality — multiple personality.
- sports facilities — places and things for doing sports
- spot-illustration — a rounded mark or stain made by foreign matter, as mud, blood, paint, ink, etc.; a blot or speck.
- spotted sandpiper — a North American sandpiper, Actitis macularia, that has brownish-gray upper parts and white underparts, and is spotted with black in the summer.
- spread your wings — if you spread your wings, you do something new and rather difficult or move to a new place, because you feel more confident in your abilities than you used to and you want to gain wider experience
- spring cankerworm — the striped, green caterpillar of any of several geometrid moths: a foliage pest of various fruit and shade trees, as Paleacrita vernata (spring cankerworm) and Alsophila pometaria (fall cankerworm)
- spruce gall aphid — any of various homopterous insects of the family Adelgidae, as Adelges abietis (spruce gall aphid) and Pineus pinifoliae (pine leaf aphid) that feed and form galls on conifers.
- st. crispin's day — October 25: anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt (1415).
- stars and stripes — US national flag
- steamboat springs — a town in NW Colorado: ski resort.
- stereolithography — a process for creating three-dimensional objects using a computer-controlled laser to build up the required structure, layer by layer, from a liquid photopolymer that solidifies.
- storm in a teacup — a violent fuss or disturbance over a trivial matter
- stratified sample — a sample that is not drawn at random from the whole population, but separately from a number of disjoint strata of the population in order to ensure a more representative sample
- stray capacitance — undesired capacitance in equipment, occurring between the wiring, between the wiring and the chassis, or between components and the chassis
- strike-slip fault — a geological fault on which the movement is along the strike of the fault
- stymphalian birds — a flock of predacious birds of Arcadia that were driven away and killed by Hercules as one of his labors.
- subscription rate — the price charged for a subscription
- super-nationalism — an extreme or fanatical loyalty or devotion to a nation.
- super-terrestrial — pertaining to, consisting of, or representing the earth as distinct from other planets.
- 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.
- supermassive star — Astronomy. a star with a mass more than fifty times the mass of the sun.
- superregeneration — regeneration in which a signal is alternately amplified and quenched at a frequency slightly above the audible range to achieve high sensitivity with a single tube.
- supervisory board — a board of management of which nonmanagerial workers are members, having supervisory powers over some aspects of management decision-making
- 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.
- supralapsarianism — the doctrine that the decree of election preceded human creation and the Fall (opposed to infralapsarianism).
- supreme sacrifice — the sacrifice of one's own life: Many made the supreme sacrifice during the war.
- tactile corpuscle — an oval sense organ made of flattened cells and encapsulated nerve endings, occurring in hairless skin, as the tips of the fingers and toes, and functioning as a touch receptor.
- take no prisoners — to be uncompromising and resolute in one's actions
- take-no-prisoners — wholeheartedly aggressive; zealous; gung-ho: a businessman with a take-no-prisoners attitude toward dealmaking.
- technical support — an advising and troubleshooting service provided by a manufacturer, typically a software or hardware developer, to its customers, often online or on the telephone.
- telescopic damper — a device with telescopic parts that reduce vibration in a motor vehicle
- temple of artemis — the temple at Ephesus dedicated to Artemis.
- tertiary syphilis — the third stage of syphilis, characterized by involvement of the internal organs, especially the brain, spinal cord, heart, and liver.
- the metamorphosis — a short story (1915) by Franz Kafka.
- the past anterior — a French tense: the pluperfect
- the prairie state — a nickname for the state of Illinois in the U.S.
- the primrose path — a pleasurable way of life
- the rail-splitter — Lincoln2
- the tabloid press — (considered as a whole) newspapers with pages about 30 cm (12 inches) by 40 cm (16 inches), usually characterized by an emphasis on photographs and a concise and often sensational style