17-letter words containing s, h, a, m, o
- nakhon ratchasima — a city in central Thailand.
- natural harmonics — harmonics of a note produced on a stringed instrument by lightly touching an open or unstopped sounded string.
- neo-malthusianism — a view or doctrine advocating population control, especially by contraception.
- neo-scholasticism — a contemporary application of Scholasticism to modern problems and life.
- non-thermoplastic — soft and pliable when heated, as some plastics, without any change of the inherent properties.
- nonaccomplishment — Something that does not achieve the intended goal.
- omphalomesenteric — (anatomy) Of or pertaining to the umbilicus and mesentery.
- organic chemistry — the branch of chemistry, originally limited to substances found only in living organisms, dealing with the compounds of carbon.
- out of harm's way — If someone or something is out of harm's way, they are in a safe place away from danger or from the possibility of being damaged.
- overhead camshaft — a camshaft in an automotive engine that is located in the cylinder head over the engine block rather than in the block. Abbreviation: OHC.
- overstep the mark — If someone oversteps the mark, they behave in a way that is considered unacceptable.
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- pashmina politics — the adoption of political policies immediately after they have gone out of fashion
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- 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.
- plains of abraham — a high plain adjoining the city of Quebec, Canada: battlefield where the English under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in 1759.
- ploughman's lunch — a light lunch consisting of bread and cheese, and sometimes pickled onions.
- pseudo-humanistic — a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
- 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)
- roman catholicism — the faith, practice, and system of government of the Roman Catholic Church.
- sandringham house — a residence of the royal family, in Sandringham, a village in E England, in Norfolk near the E shore of the Wash
- sandwich compound — any of a class of organometallic compounds whose molecules have a metal atom or ion bound between two plane parallel organic rings
- sawatch mountains — range of the Rocky Mountains, in central Colo.: highest peak, Elbert
- second-hand smoke — from sb else's cigarette
- semi-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- semidetached mode — (programming) A term used by COCOMO to describe a project development somewhere between organic and embedded. The team members have a mixture of experienced and inexperienced personnel. The software to be developed has some characteristics of both organic and embedded modes. Semidetached software can be as large as 300K DSIs.
- semisophisticated — somewhat sophisticated.
- sexual dimorphism — the condition in which the males and females in a species are morphologically different, as with many birds.
- shorter catechism — one of the two catechisms established by the Westminster Assembly in 1647, used chiefly in Presbyterian churches.
- shower attachment — a device fixed to taps to make a shower
- shuttle diplomacy — diplomatic negotiations carried out by a mediator who travels back and forth between the negotiating parties.
- sixth commandment — “Thou shalt not kill”: sixth of the Ten Commandments.
- smarandache logic — neutrosophic logic
- snatch one's time — to leave a job, taking whatever pay is due
- sodium bichromate — a red or orange crystalline, water-soluble solid, Na 2 Cr 2 O 7 ⋅2H 2 O, used as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of dyes and inks, as a corrosion inhibitor, a mordant, a laboratory reagent, in the tanning of leather, and in electroplating.
- sodium dichromate — a red or orange crystalline, water-soluble solid, Na 2 Cr 2 O 7 ⋅2H 2 O, used as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of dyes and inks, as a corrosion inhibitor, a mordant, a laboratory reagent, in the tanning of leather, and in electroplating.
- south farmingdale — a town on central Long Island, in SE New York.
- south sea company — a British joint stock company that traded in South America in the 18th century. The South Sea Company took over the national debt in return for a monopoly of trade with the South Seas, causing feverish speculation in their stocks, and a financial crash in 1720 (the South Sea Bubble)
- southampton water — an inlet of the English Channel in S England
- spiny-headed worm — any of a small group of endoparasites of the phylum Acanthocephala, as larvae parasitic in insects and crustaceans and as adults in various vertebrates.
- spongy parenchyma — the lower layer of the ground tissue of a leaf, characteristically containing irregularly shaped cells with relatively few chloroplasts and large intercellular spaces.
- star of bethlehem — the star that is supposed to have appeared above Bethlehem at the birth of Christ
- star-of-bethlehem — any of several plants belonging to the genus Ornithogalum, of the lily family, having grasslike leaves and clusters of white flowers.
- steamship company — a company which has a fleet of steamships
- stochastic matrix — a square matrix with positive entries totaling 1 in each row.
- sunbury-on-thames — a town in SE England, in N Surrey. Pop: 27 415 (2001)
- support mechanism — any formal system or method of providing support or assistance
- swash plate motor — a collar or face plate on a shaft that is inclined at an oblique angle to the axis of rotation and converts reciprocating motion to rotation
- sydenham's chorea — a form of chorea affecting children, often associated with rheumatic fever
- take sth by storm — If someone or something takes a place by storm, they are extremely successful.