16-letter words containing s, a, x, i
- maximum-security — designed for or housing prisoners regarded as being very dangerous to society.
- mexican hairless — one of a breed of small dogs having no hair except for a tuft on the top of the head and a little fuzz on the lower part of the tail.
- mexican standoff — a stalemate or impasse; a confrontation that neither side can win.
- mutual exclusion — (parallel, operating system) (Or "mutex", plural: "mutexes") A collection of techniques for sharing resources so that different uses do not conflict and cause unwanted interactions. One of the most commonly used techniques for mutual exclusion is the semaphore.
- neapolitan sixth — (in musical harmony) a chord composed of the subdominant of the key, plus a minor third and a minor sixth. Harmonically it is equivalent to the first inversion of a major chord built upon the flattened supertonic
- no fixed address — Someone who is of no fixed address does not have a permanent place to live.
- orthodox judaism — Judaism as observed by Orthodox Jews.
- postfix notation — (language) (Or "Reverse Polish Notation", RPN) One of the possible orderings of functions and operands: in postfix notation the functions are preceded by all their operands. For example, what may normally be written as "1+2" becomes "1 2 +". Postfix notation is well suited for stack based architectures but modern compilers reduced this advantage considerably. The best-known language with postfix syntax is FORTH. Some Hewlett-Packard calculators use it, e.g. HP-25, HP-29C, HP-41C, HP-23SII. Compare: infix notation, prefix notation.
- presentation box — a specially designed and attractive box to hold a product, and make it look more impressive
- proxime accessit — the person coming next after the winner in a competitive examination or an academic prize giving; runner-up
- recreational sex — sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction, without the commitment of a relationship
- rotation of axes — a process of replacing the axes in a Cartesian coordinate system with a new set of axes making a specified angle with and having the same origin as the original axes.
- russian orthodox — of or relating to the Russian Orthodox Church
- safe deposit box — A safe deposit box is a small box, usually kept in a special room in a bank, in which you can store valuable objects.
- safe-deposit box — a lockable metal box or drawer, especially in a bank vault, used for safely storing valuable papers, jewelry, etc.
- saxifrage family — the plant family Saxifragaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and small trees having alternate or opposite leaves, clustered or solitary flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including the astilbe, currant, deutzia, gooseberry, hydrangea, mock orange, piggy-back plant, saxifrage, and strawberry geranium.
- saxo grammaticus — c1150–1206? Danish historian and poet.
- scandinavian lox — a kind of brine-cured salmon, having either a salt cure (Scandinavian lox) or a sugar cure (Nova Scotia lox) often eaten with cream cheese on a bagel.
- self-examination — examination into one's own state, conduct, motives, etc.
- self-explication — the act of explicating.
- sex-and-shopping — (of a novel) belonging to a genre of novel in which the central character, a woman, has a number of sexual encounters, and the author mentions the name of many up-market products
- sexual deviation — a type of mental disorder characterized by a preference for or obsession with unusual sexual practices, as pedophilia, sadomasochism, or exhibitionism.
- sexual relations — sexual intercourse; coitus.
- sexual selection — a special type of natural selection in which the sexes acquire distinct forms either because the members of one sex choose mates with particular features or because in the competition for mates among the members of one sex only those with certain traits succeed.
- social exclusion — Social exclusion is the act of making certain groups of people within a society feel isolated and unimportant.
- spherical excess — the difference between the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle and two right angles.
- symmetric matrix — a matrix with the lower-left half equal to the mirror image of the upper-right half; a matrix that is its own transpose.
- texas revolution — a revolutionary movement, 1832–36, in which U.S. settlers asserted their independence from Mexico and established the republic of Texas.
- triple-expansion — noting a power source, especially a steam engine, using the same fluid at three successive stages of expansion to do work in three or more cylinders.