20-letter words containing s, h, t, u
- sb's future lies swh — If you say that someone's future lies in a particular place or activity, you think they will be most successful or happy in that place or doing that activity.
- scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
- scavenger's daughter — an instrument of torture that doubled over and squeezed the body so strongly and violently that blood was brought forth from the ears and nose: invented in 16th-century England.
- school without walls — a nontraditional educational program that uses community facilities as learning resources.
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- settle accounts with — to pay or receive a balance due
- shareholders' equity — Shareholders' equity is the total amount of ownership investment in a company.
- shibah asar betammuz — Shivah Asar Betammuz.
- shifting cultivation — a land-use system, esp in tropical Africa, in which a tract of land is cultivated until its fertility diminishes, when it is abandoned until this is restored naturally
- shivah asar betammuz — a Jewish fast day observed on the 17th day of Tammuz in memory of the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70.
- shoulder to shoulder — the part of each side of the body in humans, at the top of the trunk, extending from each side of the base of the neck to the region where the arm articulates with the trunk.
- shoulder-length hair — hair that reaches a person's shoulders
- size-weight illusion — a standard sense illusion that a small object is heavier than a large object of the same weight
- slip through the net — If criminals slip through the net, they avoid being caught by the system or trap that was meant to catch them.
- snow-on-the-mountain — a North American euphorbiaceous plant, Euphorbia marginata, having white-edged leaves and showy white bracts surrounding small flowers
- soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
- sound-and-light show — a nighttime spectacle or performance, at which a building, historic site, etc., is illuminated and the historic significance is imparted to spectators by means of narration, sound effects, and music.
- south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
- south atlantic ocean — the part of the Atlantic Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
- south orkney islands — an uninhabited group of islands in the S Atlantic, southeast of Cape Horn: formerly a dependency of the Falkland Islands; part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962 (claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty). Area: 621 sq km (240 sq miles)
- south temperate zone — the part of the earth's surface between the tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Circle.
- southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
- states of the church — Papal States
- step up to the plate — to move into batting position
- stockholders' equity — the net assets of a corporation as owned by stockholders in capital stock, capital surplus, and undistributed earnings.
- straight-cut tobacco — tobacco that is cut in such a way that it will lie flat.
- suitland-silver hill — a city in central Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
- synchronous rotation — rotation of a satellite in which the period of rotation is equal to the period of orbit around its primary, leaving the same face always pointing toward the primary: The moon is in synchronous rotation about the earth.
- telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
- that makes two of us — the same applies to me
- the (great) unwashed — The unwashed or the great unwashed is a way of referring to poor or ordinary people.
- the canterbury tales — an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.
- the course of nature — the ordinary course of events
- the founding fathers — any of the men who were members of the U.S. Constituional Convention of 1787
- the garment industry — the manufacturing of items of clothing
- the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
- the leisure industry — businesses such as cinemas, restaurants, sports facilities etc
- the methodist church — a group of people within the Christian religion who follow a system of faith and practice initiated by the English preacher John Wesley (1703–91) and his followers
- the naughty nineties — (in Britain) the 1890s, considered to be a period of fun-loving and laxity, esp in sexual morals
- the sum total of sth — all of something
- the thousand guineas — an annual horse race, restricted to fillies, run at Newmarket since 1814
- the three musketeers — French Les Trois Mousquetaires. a historical novel (1844) by Alexandre Dumas père.
- thioantimonious acid — any of a group of hypothetical acids, H3SbS3, HSbS2, and H4Sb2S5, known only in the forms of their salts in solution
- this time, for sure! — (exclamation) Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g. attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The canonical response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See hacker humour.
- thomas of erceldoune — Thomas of, Thomas of Erceldoune.
- thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
- three-quarter nelson — a hold in which a wrestler, from a kneeling position behind a prone opponent, applies a half nelson with one arm, passes the other arm under the opponent's body on the near side, and locks the arms at the fingers or wrist on the back of the opponent's neck.
- throw up one's hands — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- to cross the rubicon — If you say that someone has crossed the Rubicon, you mean that they have reached a point where they cannot change a decision or course of action.