18-letter words containing p, l, e, a, t
- self-contemplation — the act or process of thinking about oneself or one's values, beliefs, behavior, etc.
- self-deprecatingly — in a self-deprecating manner
- self-disparagement — the act of disparaging.
- self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
- self-tapping screw — a screw designed to tap its corresponding female thread as it is driven.
- separate but equal — pertaining to a racial policy, formerly practiced in some parts of the United States, by which black people could be segregated if granted equal opportunities and facilities, as for education, transportation, or jobs.
- september holidays — a period of time in September when people do not have to go to school, college or work
- shatterproof glass — glass designed to resist shattering
- shepherd satellite — a small moon orbiting near a planetary ring, whose gravitational pull helps confine the ring and the ring's extent.
- simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
- sit up like jackie — to sit bolt upright, esp cheekily
- slow on the uptake — slow to understand or learn
- slow-motion replay — a showing again in slow motion of a sequence of action, esp of part of a sporting contest immediately after it happens
- small pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
- software backplane — (programming, tool) A CASE framework from Atherton.
- solitary sandpiper — a North American sandpiper, Tringa solitaria, of inland wetlands, having a brownish-gray, white-spotted back and whitish underparts.
- special assessment — a tax levied by a local government on private property to pay the cost of local public improvements, as sidewalk construction or sewage disposal, that are of general benefit to the property taxed.
- special collection — a collection of materials segregated from a general library collection according to form, subject, age, condition, rarity, source, or value.
- special prosecutor — (formerly) an independent counsel.
- special relativity — the state or fact of being relative.
- specialist teacher — a teacher with expertise in working with children with special educational needs, such as dyslexia
- spectroheliography — the process of obtaining an image of the sun in light of a particular wavelength, such as calcium or hydrogen, showing the distribution of the element over the surface and in the solar atmosphere, using a spectroheliograph
- spectropolarimeter — an instrument for determining the extent to which plane-polarized light of various wavelengths is rotated by certain solutions, consisting of a combination of a spectroscope and a polarimeter.
- spectropolariscope — an instrument combining the functions of a spectroscope with those of a polariscope.
- spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
- 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
- spotted flycatcher — a European woodland songbird, Muscicapa striata, with a greyish-brown streaked plumage: family Muscicapidae (Old World flycatchers)
- st. james's palace — a palace in London, England: the royal residence from the time of Henry VIII until the accession of Victoria.
- status epilepticus — a condition in which repeated epileptic seizures occur without the patient gaining consciousness between them. If untreated for a prolonged period it can lead to long-term disability or death
- stepping-off place — jumping-off place (def 2).
- subatomic particle — physics:
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- super royal octavo — a book size, 63⁄4 by 101⁄4 inches
- super royal quarto — a book size, 101⁄4 by 131⁄2 inches
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- talent competition — a contest in which people compete by showcasing their talents, for example in singing, dancing, acrobatics, etc
- talk between ships — TBS (def 1).
- telephone exchange — a telecommunications facility to which subscribers' telephones connect, that switches calls among subscribers or to other exchanges for further routing.
- television company — a company that broadcasts programmes by television
- temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
- terrestrial planet — inner planet.
- the family compact — the ruling oligarchy in Upper Canada in the early 19th century
- the general public — the people in a society; people in general
- the lords temporal — (in Britain) peers other than bishops in their capacity as members of the House of Lords
- the middle passage — the journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the W coast of Africa to the Caribbean: the longest part of the journey of the slave ships sailing to the Caribbean or the Americas
- the palmetto state — a nickname for South Carolina
- the practicalities — the real facts or details of a situation, as opposed to its theoretical aspects
- the-cocktail-party — a play in verse (1950) by T. S. Eliot.
- to all appearances — apparently