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17-letter words containing s, e, a, h, n

  • peaches and cream — If you say that a woman or a girl has a peaches and cream complexion, you mean that she has very clear, smooth, pale skin.
  • penalty shoot-out — In football, a penalty shoot-out is a way of deciding the result of a game that has ended in a draw. Players from each team try to score a goal in turn until one player fails to score and their team loses the game.
  • peripheral vision — all that is visible to the eye outside the central area of focus; side vision.
  • perpetual spinach — a variety of spinach that keeps producing edible leaves
  • personality clash — friction between two people who have different personalities or points of view
  • perth and kinross — a council area of N central Scotland, corresponding mainly to the historical counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire: part of Tayside Region from 1975 until 1996: chiefly mountainous, with agriculture, tourism, and forestry. Administrative centre: Perth. Pop: 135 990 (2003 est). Area: 5321 sq km (2019 sq miles)
  • petrarchan sonnet — a sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and of a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
  • 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.
  • phenyl isocyanate — a liquid reagent, C 7 H 5 NO, having an unpleasant, irritating odor: used chiefly for identifying alcohols and amines.
  • photo-respiration — the oxidation of carbohydrates in many higher plants in which they get oxygen from light and then release carbon dioxide, somewhat different from photosynthesis.
  • physical medicine — the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury by means of physical agents, as manipulation, massage, exercise, heat, or water.
  • physical pendulum — any apparatus consisting of a body of possibly irregular shape allowed to rotate freely about a horizontal axis on which it is pivoted (distinguished from simple pendulum).
  • 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.
  • polioencephalitis — a disease characterized by inflammation of the gray matter of the brain.
  • 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.
  • private ownership — the fact of being owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by the state or a public body
  • pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
  • psychoeducational — designating or of psychological methods, as intelligence tests, used in evaluating learning ability
  • put one's hand to — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
  • pythagorean scale — the major scale as derived acoustically by Pythagoras from the perfect fifth.
  • quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
  • quantum mechanics — a theory of the mechanics of atoms, molecules, and other physical systems that are subject to the uncertainty principle. Abbreviation: QM.
  • racial harassment — persecution on the basis of race
  • rehospitalization — the act, process, or state of being hospitalized.
  • respiratory chain — a series of mitochondrial proteins that transport electrons of hydrogen, released in the Krebs cycle, from acetyl coenzyme A to inhaled oxygen to form H 2 O: the energy released in the process is conserved as ATP.
  • rhode island bent — a European pasture grass, Agrostis tenuis, naturalized in North America, having red flower clusters.
  • rhodope mountains — a mountain range in SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula extending along the border between Bulgaria and Greece. Highest peak: Golyam Perelik (Bulgaria), 2191 m (7188 ft)
  • right parenthesis — (character)   ")". ASCII character 41. Common names: right paren; right parenthesis; right; close; thesis ("(" = paren); close paren; close parenthesis; right parenthesis; right banana. Rare: already ("(" = so); rparen; ITU-T: closing parenthesis; close round bracket, right round bracket, INTERCAL: wane ("(" = wax); unparenthisey ("(" = parenthisey); right ear. Paired with left parenthesis.
  • saint christopher — Saint, died a.d. c250, Christian martyr.
  • san pedro channel — a strait between the mainland of SW California and Santa Catalina Island. About 20 miles (32 km) wide.
  • sandringham house — a residence of the royal family, in Sandringham, a village in E England, in Norfolk near the E shore of the Wash
  • save one's breath — the air inhaled and exhaled in respiration.
  • sawed-off shotgun — rifle with a short barrel
  • say the unsayable — to express an opinion thought to be too controversial to mention
  • scarlet firethorn — a Eurasian evergreen, thorny shrub, Pyracantha coccinea, of the rose family, having white, hairy flower clusters and bright red berries.
  • scarlet lightning — scarlet lychnis.
  • schiff-s--reagent — a solution of rosaniline and sulfurous acid in water, used to test for the presence of aldehydes.
  • school attendance — a measure of the number of children who attend school and the amount of time they are present
  • search and rescue — Search and rescue operations involve looking for people who are lost or in danger, for example, after a war or a natural disaster, and bringing them back safely.
  • seat-of-the-pants — using or based on experience, instinct, or guesswork: a seat-of-the-pants management style.
  • second-hand smoke — from sb else's cigarette
  • self-annihilation — self-destruction; suicide.
  • set one's hand to — to sign (a document)
  • seventh amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing trial by jury.
  • sexual harassment — unwelcome sexual advances made by an employer or superior, especially when compliance is made a condition of continued employment or advancement.
  • shake one's booty — to dance
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