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19-letter words containing s, e, h, u

  • the (three) unities — the three principles of dramatic construction derived by French neoclassicists from Aristotle's Poetics, holding that a play should have one unified plot (unity of action) and that all the action should occur within one day (unity of time) and be limited to a single locale (unity of place)
  • the bluegrass state — Kentucky
  • the buck stops here — the ultimate responsibility lies here
  • the compassion club — (in Canada) a nonprofit organization that provides uncontaminated cannabis for medical purposes and natural therapies in a safe environment
  • the executive suite — the offices of the top managers
  • the finishing touch — If you add the finishing touches to something, you add or do the last things that are necessary to complete it.
  • the four corners of — You can use expressions such as the four corners of the world to refer to places that are a long way from each other.
  • the open university — (in Britain) a university founded in 1969 for mature students studying by television and radio lectures, correspondence courses, local counselling, and summer schools
  • the retail business — the business sector in which goods are sold individually or in small quantities to consumers
  • the volunteer state — a nickname for Tennessee
  • theological virtues — one of the three graces: faith, hope, or charity, infused into the human intellect and will by a special grace of God.
  • theory of equations — the branch of mathematics dealing with methods of finding the solutions to algebraic equations.
  • thrust augmentation — an increase in the thrust of a jet or rocket engine, as by afterburning or reheating.
  • thumb one's nose at — to deride or mock, esp by placing the thumb on the nose with fingers extended
  • to be running short — If you are running short of something or running low on something, you do not have much of it left. If a supply of something is running short or running low, there is not much of it left.
  • to be up shit creek — to be in an extremely bad situation
  • to click your heels — If someone such as a soldier clicks their heels, they make a sound by knocking the heels of their shoes together when saluting or greeting someone.
  • to plumb new depths — If you say that something plumbs new depths, you mean that it is worse than all the things of its kind that have existed before, even though some of them have been very bad.
  • to plumb the depths — If someone plumbs the depths of an unpleasant emotion or quality, they experience it or show it to an extreme degree.
  • to pop the question — If you pop the question, you ask someone to marry you.
  • to shudder to think — If you say that you shudder to think what would happen in a particular situation, you mean that you expect it to be so bad that you do not really want to think about it.
  • to take the biscuit — If someone has done something very stupid, rude, or selfish, you can say that they take the biscuit or that what they have done takes the biscuit, to emphasize your surprise at their behaviour.
  • to the exclusion of — If you do one thing to the exclusion of something else, you only do the first thing and do not do the second thing at all.
  • to wet your whistle — To wet your whistle means to have a drink.
  • touch all the bases — to deal with all related details
  • trisodium phosphate — sodium phosphate (def 3).
  • trumpet honeysuckle — an American honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, having spikes of large, tubular flowers, deep-red outside and yellow within.
  • trusteeship council — a United Nations body that supervises the government of a territory by a foreign country
  • tubular steel chair — a chair with a frame made of tubular steel
  • turn someone'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.
  • turn sth inside out — If someone turns a place inside out or upside down, they search it very thoroughly and usually make it very untidy.
  • ultramicrochemistry — the branch of microchemistry dealing with minute quantities of material weighing one microgram or less.
  • under the shadow of — in danger of; apparently fated for
  • under the spotlight — If someone or something comes under the spotlight, they are thoroughly examined, especially by journalists and the public.
  • university hospital — a hospital that is affiliated with a university. University hospitals provide clinical education and training to future and current doctors, nurses, and other health professionals, in addition to delivering medical care to patients
  • up against the wall — any of various permanent upright constructions having a length much greater than the thickness and presenting a continuous surface except where pierced by doors, windows, etc.: used for shelter, protection, or privacy, or to subdivide interior space, to support floors, roofs, or the like, to retain earth, to fence in an area, etc.
  • upset the applecart — a pushcart used by a vendor of apples.
  • use the source luke — (humour, programming)   (UTSL) (A pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in "Star Wars") A more polite version of RTFS. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven't attracted wizards to answer them. Once upon a time in Elder Days, everyone running Unix had source. After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a Unix source licence. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code (made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern. Nowadays, free Unix clones are becoming common enough that almost anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is probably Linux. FreeBSD, NetBSD, 386BSD, jolix also have their followers. Cheap commercial Unix implementations with source such as BSD/OS from BSDI are accelerating this trend.
  • vesicular exanthema — an infectious viral disease of swine, characterized by blisters on the snout, mucous membranes, and feet.
  • wage-push inflation — an inflationary trend caused by wage increases that in turn cause rises in production costs and prices.
  • welsh mountain pony — a small sturdy but graceful breed of pony used mostly for riding, originally from Wales
  • west dunbartonshire — a council area of W central Scotland, on Loch Lomond and the Clyde estuary: corresponds to part of the historical county of Dunbartonshire; part of Strathclyde Region from 1975 to 1996: engineering industries. Administrative centre: Dumbarton. Pop: 92 320 (2003 est). Area: 162 sq km (63 sq miles)
  • what possessed you? — If you ask what possessed someone to do something, you are emphasizing your great surprise that they have done something which you consider foolish or dangerous.
  • with your eyes open — If you say that you did something with your eyes open or with your eyes wide open, you mean that you knew about the problems and difficulties that you were likely to have.
  • xt bus architecture — (hardware, architecture)   (After the IBM PC XT) An eight-bit ISA bus architecture used by Intel 8086 and Intel 8088 systems in the IBM PC and IBM PC XT in the 1980s. It predates the 16-bit ISA architecture used on the Intel 80286 based machines. The XT bus has four DMA channels, of which three are brought out to the expansion slots. Of these three, two are normally allocated to machine functions: DMA channel Expansion Standard function 0 No {dynamic RAM} refresh 1 Yes add-on cards 2 Yes {floppy disk} controller 3 Yes {hard disc} controller (1997-09-15)
  • your hands are tied — If you say that your hands are tied, you mean that something is preventing you from acting in the way that you want to.
  • zero-hours contract — an employment contract which does not oblige the employer to provide regular work for the employee, but requires the employee to be on call in the event that work becomes available
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