14-letter words containing s, e, c, k
- panic-stricken — overcome with, characterized by, or resulting from fear, panic, or the like: panic-stricken parents looking for their child; a panic-stricken phone call.
- peacock's tail — a handsome brown seaweed, Padina pavonia (though coloured yellow-olive, red, and green) whose fan-shaped fronds have concentric bands of iridescent hairs
- peck's bad boy — the mischievous boy in a series of newspaper stories and collected volumes by the American newspaperman and humorist George Wilbur Peck (1840–1916).
- peel-and-stick — ready to be applied after peeling off the backing to expose an adhesive surface: peel-and-stick labels.
- phosphate rock — phosphorite.
- pick one's way — to choose or select from among a group: to pick a contestant from the audience.
- pick's disease — a condition characterized by progressive deterioration of the brain with atrophy of the cerebral cortex, esp. the frontal lobes, and evidenced in loss of memory and emotional instability
- pickled onions — onions which have been preserved in vinegar or brine
- poison hemlock — hemlock (defs 1, 3).
- pop one's cork — the outer bark of an oak, Quercus suber, of Mediterranean countries, used for making stoppers for bottles, floats, etc.
- quick response — fast reaction time
- quickie strike — a labor strike that has not been called or sanctioned by the officials of the union.
- quicksilvering — the mercury on the back of a mirror
- quicksilverish — resembling quicksilver
- quiescent tank — a tank, usually for sewage sludge, in which the sludge is allowed to remain for a time so that sedimentation can occur
- rathke's pouch — an invagination of stomodeal ectoderm developing into the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
- reception desk — the front desk in a hotel where guests can books rooms or ask questions
- recklinghausen — a city in NW Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany.
- recovery stock — a security that has fallen in price but is believed to have the ability to recover
- reservoir rock — rock that has sufficient porosity to contain accumulations of oil or gas.
- ringneck snake — any of several small, nonvenomous North American snakes of the genus Diadophis, usually having a conspicuous yellow or orange ring around the neck.
- rock mechanics — the study of the mechanical behaviour of rocks, esp their strength, elasticity, permeability, porosity, density, and reaction to stress
- rocket science — rocketry.
- sackville-west — Dame Victoria Mary ("Vita") 1892–1962, English poet and novelist (wife of Harold Nicolson).
- sakha republic — an administrative division in E Russia, in NE Siberia on the Arctic Ocean: the coldest inhabited region of the world; it has rich mineral resources. Capital: Yakutsk. Pop: 948 100 (2002). Area: 3 103 200 sq km (1 197 760 sq miles)
- salary bracket — a given range or bracket of salaries within which the amount of pay earned by someone falls
- salt lake city — a state in the W United States. 84,916 sq. mi. (219,930 sq. km). Capital: Salt Lake City. Abbreviation: UT (for use with zip code), Ut.
- schlockmeister — a person who deals in or sells inferior or worthless goods; junk dealer.
- schoolies week — (in Australia) a week when large numbers of school leavers gather together for a holiday away from home after the end of their final exams
- schottky noise — shot effect.
- schumann-heink — Ernestine, 1861–1936, U.S. contralto, born in Bohemia.
- scratch monkey — (humour) As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
- screen blanker — screen saver
- security check — the process of checking that a person is not armed, or carrying something dangerous
- seebeck effect — thermoelectric effect.
- self-mockingly — in a self-mocking manner
- self-reckoning — count; computation; calculation.
- serrated wrack — the seaweed Fucus serratus
- serum sickness — a generalized allergic reaction to a foreign serum or drug, characterized by fever, skin rash, enlarged lymph nodes, and painful joints.
- sheepback rock — roche moutonnée.
- shield cricket — the interstate cricket competition held for the Sheffield Shield
- shipping clerk — a clerk who attends to the packing, unpacking, receiving, sending out, and recording of shipments.
- shock absorber — a device for damping sudden and rapid motion, as the recoil of a spring-mounted object from shock.
- sick and tired — afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
- sickle feather — one of the paired, elongated, sickle-shaped, middle feathers of the tail of the rooster.
- single-sticker — a sailboat, esp. a sloop, having only one mast
- skew-symmetric — noting a square matrix that is equal to the negative of its transpose.
- skull practice — a meeting for the purpose of discussion, exchange of ideas, solving problems, etc.
- smoke detector — an electronic fire alarm that is activated by the presence of smoke.
- smoked haddock — haddock that has been cured by treating with smoke