18-letter words containing p, s, e
- 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.
- sell someone a pup — to swindle someone by selling him something worthless
- semiprecious stone — See at semiprecious.
- 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.
- separation anxiety — the normal fear and apprehension expressed by infants when removed from their mothers or approached by strangers.
- september holidays — a period of time in September when people do not have to go to school, college or work
- september massacre — (in the French Revolution) the massacre of royalists and other inmates of the prisons of Paris, September 2–6, 1792.
- septic sore throat — an acute, toxic, streptococcus infection of the throat producing fever, tonsillitis, and other serious effects.
- service department — a repair shop
- set priority level — (SPL) The way traditional Unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt priority levels and thus blocking lower level interrupts.
- 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.
- shatterproof glass — glass designed to resist shattering
- sheltered workshop — a place of employment for persons with disabilities where their rights are protected and their needs are met.
- shepherd satellite — a small moon orbiting near a planetary ring, whose gravitational pull helps confine the ring and the ring's extent.
- 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.
- shoot from the hip — the act of shooting with a bow, firearm, etc.
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- sierra blanca peak — a mountain in S New Mexico: highest peak in the Sacramento Mountains. 11,997 feet (3651 meters).
- silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
- 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
- sleeping policeman — a bump built across roads, esp in housing estates, to deter motorists from speeding
- 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
- 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.
- soda-lime feldspar — plagioclase.
- sodium hyposulfite — sodium thiosulfate.
- sodium polysulfide — a yellow-brown, water-soluble, granular powder, Na 2 S n , used chiefly in the manufacture of sulfur dyes, insecticides, and synthetic rubber.
- 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.
- 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
- spare-part surgery — surgical replacement of defective or damaged organs by transplant or insertion of artificial devices
- speak for yourself — If you say 'Speak for yourself' when someone has said something, you mean that what they have said is only their opinion or applies only to them.
- 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
- specific viscosity — a measure of the resistance to flow of a fluid, expressed as the ratio of the absolute viscosity of the fluid to that of a reference fluid (usually water in the case of liquids)