17-letter words containing s, a, f, e
- nightshade family — the plant family Solanaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, trees, shrubs, and vines having alternate, simple or pinnate leaves, conspicuous flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including belladonna, eggplant, nightshade, peppers of the genus Capsicum, petunia, potato, tobacco, and tomato.
- nonteaching staff — employees within an academic or vocational environment whose jobs do not involve teaching
- not one's idea of — not what one regards as (hard work, a holiday, etc)
- not spare oneself — to exert oneself to the full
- odds-on favourite — a person, team, horse, etc that is regarded as the most likely to win a competition
- off one's own bat — If someone does something off their own bat, they do it without anyone else suggesting it.
- off-site facility — An off-site facility is a facility which is not at the main industrial or commercial site.
- on the half shell — served raw, with seasonings, on a half shell
- one of these days — at some future time
- one size fits all — (of clothing) designed to fit people of a wide range of sizes.
- one-size-fits-all — (of clothing) designed to fit people of a wide range of sizes.
- orange free state — a province in central Republic of South Africa: a Boer republic 1854–1900; a British colony (Orange River Colony, ) 1900–10. 49,647 sq. mi. (128,586 sq. km). Capital: Bloemfontein.
- orifice discharge — Orifice discharge is a model for calculating how quickly a fluid will come out of a punctured vessel or pipe.
- out of all reason — unreasonable
- out of one's head — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
- overhead camshaft — a camshaft in an automotive engine that is located in the cylinder head over the engine block rather than in the block. Abbreviation: OHC.
- overreach oneself — to fail because of trying to do more than one can
- pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
- pair of compasses — compass (def 7)
- parts of kesteven — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
- passenger traffic — number of passengers
- past life therapy — a form of hypnosis or meditation based on the belief that an individual's present problems are rooted in events that occurred before birth in this life
- pate de foie gras — See under foie gras.
- performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
- performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
- plug and feathers — an apparatus for splitting stone, consisting of two tapered bars (feathers) inserted into a hole drilled into the stone, between which a narrow wedge (plug) is hammered to spread them.
- point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
- positive feedback — Electronics. the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input (negative feedback) or to aid the input (positive feedback) acoustic feedback.
- potassium sulfate — a crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 2 SO 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers, alums, and mineral water, and as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- prefect apostolic — the administrator, usually below the rank of bishop, in charge of a prefecture apostolic.
- preference shares — a share of preferred stock.
- preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- professional foul — In football, if a player commits a professional foul, they deliberately do something which is against the rules in order to prevent another player from scoring a goal.
- proof of purchase — a document, such as a receipt, etc, that proves that you have purchased or bought something
- proof-of-purchase — a sales slip, label, box top, or other item associated with a product that is presentable as evidence of actual purchase, as for claiming a refund or rebate.
- purple of cassius — a purple pigment precipitated as a sol by the interaction of gold chloride and a solution of stannic acid and stannous chloride: used chiefly in the manufacture of ruby glass, ceramic glazes, and enamels.
- qualified success — If you describe something as a qualified success, you mean that it is only partly successful.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- refuse a proposal — If an insurer refuses a proposal, it does not agree to underwrite a risk proposed by a potential client.
- sacrifice paddock — a grassed area allowed to be grazed completely, to be cultivated and resown later
- sacrificial anode — Chemistry. an anode that is attached to a metal object subject to electrolysis and is decomposed instead of the object.
- safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
- safety inspection — an inspection of a place carried out to ensure that it is safe and not dangerous
- safety precaution — a precaution that is taken in order to ensure that something is safe and not dangerous