18-letter words containing p, h, e, n
- secondary syphilis — the second stage of syphilis, characterized by eruptions of the skin and mucous membrane.
- segmental phonemes — phonemes consisting of sound segments; hence, the vowel, consonant, and semivowel sounds of a language
- self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- shape-note singing — a traditional style of a capella singing using shape-note notation.
- sharp-shinned hawk — a North American hawk, Accipiter striatus, having extremely slender legs, a bluish-gray back, and a white, rusty-barred breast.
- shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
- shipping documents — documents relating to the sending of a shipment of goods, for example containing details of contents, weight, value etc.
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
- slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
- slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
- something to spare — a surplus of something
- sonic depth finder — a sonar instrument that uses echolocation to measure depths under water.
- sound spectrograph — an electronic device for recording a sound spectogram.
- spaghetti junction — an interchange, usually between motorways, in which there are a large number of underpasses and overpasses and intersecting roads used by a large volume of high-speed traffic
- spanish succession — War of thea war (1701-14) between European powers disputing the succession to the Spanish throne
- speech recognition — Computers. the computerized analysis of spoken words in order to identify the speaker, as in security systems, or to respond to voiced commands: the analysis is performed by finding patterns in the spectrum of the incoming sound and comparing them with stored patterns of elements of sound, as phones, or of complete words.
- speech synthesizer — device that imitates human voice
- spherical triangle — a triangle formed by arcs of great circles of a sphere.
- spinal anaesthesia — anaesthesia of the lower half of the body produced by injecting an anaesthetic beneath the arachnoid membrane surrounding the spinal cord
- spur-of-the-moment — occurring or done without advance preparation or deliberation; extemporaneous; unplanned: a spur-of-the-moment decision.
- superstring theory — any supersymmetric string theory in which each type of elementary particle is treated as a vibration of a single fundamental string (superstring) at a particular frequency.
- sympathetic string — a thin wire string, as in various obsolete musical instruments, designed to vibrate sympathetically with the bowed or plucked strings to reinforce the sound.
- symphony orchestra — a large orchestra composed of wind, string, and percussion instruments and organized to perform symphonic compositions.
- systematic phoneme — a phonological unit in generative phonology representing an underlying form that takes into account the relationship between phonological patterns and morphological variation, as the unit underlying the second vowel in both derive and derivative.
- talk between ships — TBS (def 1).
- teaching equipment — teaching aids
- telephone exchange — a telecommunications facility to which subscribers' telephones connect, that switches calls among subscribers or to other exchanges for further routing.
- telephone receiver — a device, as in a telephone, that converts changes in an electric current into sound.
- telephone sex line — a telephone line operated by a phone-sex worker that offers phone sex to paying customers
- temporary hardness — hardness of water due to the presence of magnesium and calcium hydrogencarbonates, which can be precipitated as carbonates by boiling
- the encyclopedists — the writers of the French Encyclopedia (1751-72) edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, which contained the advanced ideas of the period
- the general public — the people in a society; people in general
- the heavens opened — it started pouring with rain
- the passenger seat — the seat used by a passenger of a car, beside the driver
- thought experiment — Physics. a demonstration or calculation that is based on the postulates of a theory, as relativity, and that demonstrates or clarifies the consequences of the postulates.
- threatened species — a species likely, in the near future, to become an endangered species within all or much of its range.
- to learn the ropes — If you are learning the ropes, you are learning how a particular task or job is done.
- to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
- to open your heart — If you open your heart or pour out your heart to someone, you tell them your most private thoughts and feelings.
- to pick and choose — If you pick and choose, you carefully choose only things that you really want and reject the others.
- to spill the beans — If you spill the beans, you tell someone something that people have been trying to keep secret.
- to take the plunge — If you take the plunge, you decide to do something that you consider difficult or risky.
- vulcan nerve pinch — (jargon) (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is
- ! Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12. Compare quadruple bucky. - welland ship canal — a ship canal in S Canada, in Ontario, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario: 8 locks. 25 miles (40 km) long.
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.
- western hemisphere — the western part of the terrestrial globe, including North and South America, their islands, and the surrounding waters.
- whispering gallery — a space or gallery beneath a dome or broad arch in which low sounds produced at any of certain points are clearly audible at certain other distant points.
- white iron pyrites — marcasite