20-letter words containing s, a, o
- gaff-topsail catfish — a sea catfish, Bagre marinus, occurring in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico from Cape Cod to Panama, and having the spine of the dorsal fin greatly prolonged and flattened.
- garcilaso de la vega — 1503?–36, Spanish poet.
- gastroduodenostomies — Plural form of gastroduodenostomy.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
- geological timescale — any division of geological time into chronological units, whether relative (with units in the correct temporal sequence) or absolute (with numerical ages attached)
- get ahold of oneself — If you get ahold of yourself, you force yourself to become calm and sensible after a shock or in a difficult situation.
- get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
- give one's right arm — to be prepared to make any sacrifice
- give someone the air — a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and minute amounts of other gases that surrounds the earth and forms its atmosphere.
- glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
- go against the grain — If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it, because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles.
- go from bad to worse — worsen
- go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
- go to someone's head — to confuse, excite, or intoxicate someone
- goldenhar's syndrome — a congenital disorder in which one side of the face is malformed, often with an enlargement of one side of the mouth. There may also be hearing loss, curvature of the spine, and mild retardation
- good loser/bad loser — If someone is a good loser, they accept that they have lost a game or contest without complaining. If someone is a bad loser, they hate losing and complain about it.
- governador valadares — a city in E Brazil.
- grade school teacher — a teacher in a grade school
- graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware) Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
- gravitational radius — Schwarzschild radius.
- great-great-grandson — the grandson of a grandchild
- greatest lower bound — a lower bound that is greater than or equal to all the lower bounds of a given set: 1 is the greatest lower bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbreviation: glb.
- green monkey disease — Marburg disease.
- green mountain state — Vermont (used as a nickname).
- gregory of nazianzus — Saint. ?329–89 ad, Cappadocian theologian: bishop of Caesarea (370–79). Feast days: Jan 2, 25, and 30
- grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
- group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
- group representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of interests rather than by geographical location.
- guarded horn clauses — (language) (GHC) A parallel dialect of Prolog by K. Ueda in which each clause has a guard. GHC is similar to Parlog. When several clauses match a goal, their guards are evaluated in parallel and the first clause whose guard is found to be true is used and others are rejected. It uses committed-choice nondeterminism. See also FGHC, KL1.
- guided visualization — a relaxation technique in which words, sounds, etc., are used to evoke positive mental images, feelings, and thoughts.
- hang up one's spikes — to retire, as from a professional sport
- harmonic minor scale — minor scale (def 1).
- harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
- hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
- have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
- he's no oil painting — he is not good-looking
- health questionnaire — A health questionnaire is a list of questions about someone's health issued by underwriters before accepting a person as a risk.
- heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
- heston and isleworth — a former borough, now part of Hounslow, in SE England, near London.
- heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
- historical sociology — the sociological study of the origins and development of societies and of other social phenomena that seeks underlying laws and principles.
- hold one's head high — to conduct oneself in a proud and confident manner
- holy water sprinkler — morning star (def 2).
- homo sapiens sapiens — the subspecies of the genus Homo in which modern humans are classified.
- honeysuckle ornament — anthemion.
- horizontal scan rate — (hardware) (HSR) The measure of how many scan lines of pixels a monitor can display in one second, expressed in kHz (generally somewhere between 20 and 100 kHz). The HSR is controlled by the horizontal sync signal generated by the video controller, but is limited by the speed with which the monitor can scan the electron beam horizontally across the screen and then return it to the beginning of the next line.
- horizontally opposed — A horizontally opposed engine has the cylinders set horizontally at either side of the crankshaft.
- hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
- house of assignation — a brothel.
- household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking