17-letter words containing s, m, a, r, y
- improvisationally — In an improvisational way.
- insurance company — company that sells insurance policies
- insurmountability — incapable of being surmounted, passed over, or overcome; insuperable: an insurmountable obstacle.
- irrigation system — a system of supplying (land) with water by means of artificial canals, ditches, etc, esp to promote the growth of food crops
- kawasaki syndrome — a syndrome, usually afflicting children, characterized by high fever, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, rashes, irritated eyes and mucous membranes, etc. with possible damage to the cardiovascular system
- key man insurance — Key man insurance is an insurance policy taken out by a small company on the life of a senior executive whose death would create a serious loss.
- key-man assurance — an assurance policy taken out, esp by a small company, on the life of a senior executive whose death would create a serious loss
- klerer-may system — Early system from Columbia University with special mathematics symbols. Its reference manual was two pages long!
- lyon king of arms — the chief herald of Scotland
- machado y morales — Gerardo [he-rahr-th aw] /hɛˈrɑr ðɔ/ (Show IPA), 1871–1939, president of Cuba 1925–33.
- mains electricity — electricity supplied to a building through wires
- majority decision — a decision supported by more than half the people involved
- malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
- marais des cygnes — a river in E central Kansas and W Missouri, flowing SE to the Osage River. 150 miles (241 km) long.
- maraschino cherry — a cherry cooked in colored syrup and flavored with maraschino, used to garnish desserts, cocktails, etc.
- martha's vineyard — an island off SE Massachusetts: summer resort. About 100 sq. mi. (259 sq. km).
- mass spectroscopy — an instrument used to determine the masses of small, electrically charged particles.
- materialistically — excessively concerned with physical comforts or the acquisition of wealth and material possessions, rather than with spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values.
- mercantile system — a system of political and economic policy, evolving with the modern national state and seeking to secure a nation's political and economic supremacy in its rivalry with other states. According to this system, money was regarded as a store of wealth, and the goal of a state was the accumulation of precious metals, by exporting the largest possible quantity of its products and importing as little as possible, thus establishing a favorable balance of trade.
- mercy otis warren — Earl, 1891–1974, U.S. lawyer and political leader: chief justice of the U.S. 1953–69.
- mesembryanthemums — Plural form of mesembryanthemum.
- methyltransferase — any of a class of enzymes that catalyze the transfer of methyl groups from one molecule to another.
- miss lonelyhearts — a novel (1933) by Nathanael West.
- more than usually — You use more than usually to show that something shows even more of a particular quality than it normally does.
- multidisciplinary — composed of or combining several usually separate branches of learning or fields of expertise: a multidisciplinary study of the 18th century.
- mundane astrology — the astrology of worldly events, in contrast to the astrology of the individual: used especially in interpretations and forecasts involving politics, the stock market, weather, and disasters.
- munitions factory — a factory where munitions are made
- muscle dysmorphia — a mental disorder primarily affecting males, characterized by obsessions about a perceived lack of muscularity, leading to compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, etc. Compare body dysmorphic disorder.
- myasthenia gravis — a disease of impaired transmission of motor nerve impulses, characterized by episodic muscle weakness and easy fatigability, especially of the face, tongue, neck, and respiratory muscles: caused by autoimmune destruction of acetylcholine receptors. Abbreviation: MG.
- nondiscriminatory — characterized by or showing prejudicial treatment, especially as an indication of bias related to age, color, national origin, religion, sex, etc.: discriminatory practices in housing; a discriminatory tax.
- nuclear chemistry — the branch of chemistry concerned with nuclear reactions
- optical astronomy — the branch of observational astronomy using telescopes to observe or photograph celestial objects in visible light.
- 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.
- paleobiochemistry — the study of biochemical processes that occurred in fossil life forms.
- parcplace systems — (company) A company spun-off from Xerox PARC that developed the original version of VisualWorks.
- parents anonymous — (in Britain) an association of local voluntary self-help groups offering help through an anonymous telephone service to parents who fear they will injure their children, or who have other problems in managing their children
- pastoral symphony — the Symphony No. 6 in F major (1807–08) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- paymaster general — a government minister responsible for making payments by government departments
- primary processes — the generally unorganized mental activity characteristic of the unconscious and occurring in dreams, fantasies, and related processes.
- primary qualities — any of the qualities inherent in an object, namely quantity, extent, figure, solidity, and motion or rest.
- primary structure — Biochemistry. the basic sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide or protein.
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- purely and simply — You use purely and simply to emphasize that the thing you are mentioning is the only thing involved.
- quantum chemistry — the application of quantum mechanics to the study of chemical phenomena.
- recursive acronym — (convention) A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung.
- rich site summary — (web, standard) (RSS, blog, feed) A family of standard web document types containing regularly updated, short articles or news items. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds", "news feeds" or just "feeds") can be read with an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or Feedly. These are sometimes called "aggregators" because they combine multiple RSS feeds which the user can browse as a single list. The RSS reader tracks which articles the use has read, and is typically set to show only new articles, hence the idea of a "feed" or flow of new items. Most RSS feeds are based on RDF. RDF is a structured document format for describing textual resources such as news articles available on the web. RSS originally stood for "RDF Site Summary" as it was designed to provide short descriptions of (changes to) a website. Because it provides a standard way to deliver, or "syndicate", news or updates from one site to another, RSS is sometimes expanded as "Really Simple Syndication". It is closely associated with blogs, most of which provide an RSS feed of articles.
- ross and cromarty — a historic county in NW Scotland.
- safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
- seaweed marquetry — marquetry having the form of symmetrical, foliate scrolls, as on English cabinetwork of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.