20-letter words containing s, o, a, k, i
- like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- make short shrift of — to dispose of quickly and unsympathetically
- megakaryocytopoiesis — (biology) The cellular development process that leads to platelet production.
- mickey mouse program — (jargon) The North American equivalent of a "noddy program", i.e. trivial. The term doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
- minkowski space-time — a four-dimensional space in which three coordinates specify the position of a point in space and the fourth represents the time at which an event occurred at that point
- multistorey car park — a car park consisting of several levels
- nikkei stock average — an index of prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
- no lack of something — If you say there is no lack of something, you are emphasizing that there is a great deal of it.
- parkinson's syndrome — a complex of symptoms indistinguishable from Parkinson's disease, commonly affecting boxers or sometimes occurring as a result of substance abuse or an encephalitic infection.
- pick someone's brain — to obtain information or ideas from someone
- pickwickian syndrome — an abnormality characterized by extreme obesity accompanied by sleepiness, hypoventilation, and polycythemia.
- quaker meeting house — a place where Quakers gather for worship
- ride on shank's mare — to walk
- rocky mountain basic — (language) The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
- rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
- season ticket holder — a person who has a season ticket
- send someone packing — to dismiss or get rid of (someone) peremptorily
- shake in one's shoes — to tremble with fear or apprehension
- shank of the evening — the latter part of the afternoon
- short back and sides — If a man has a short back and sides, his hair is cut very short at the back and sides with slightly thicker, longer hair on the top of the head.
- skating championship — a competition for ice-skating
- snowflake generation — the generation of people who became adults in the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations
- snows of kilimanjaro — a short story (1936) by Ernest Hemingway.
- 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)
- stokes-adams disease — unconsciousness accompanying atrioventricular heart block, sometimes characterized by weakness, irregular pulse, and intermittent convulsive or nonconvulsive seizures.
- synchronized skating — the art or sport of teams of up to twenty skaters holding onto each other and moving in patterns in time to music
- take into one'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.
- take pity on someone — If you take pity on someone, you feel sorry for them and help them.
- take something amiss — to be annoyed or offended by something
- there's no mistaking — You can say there is no mistaking something when you are emphasizing that you cannot fail to recognize or understand it.
- to shake like a leaf — If you say that someone is shaking like a leaf, you mean that their body is shaking a lot, for instance because they are very cold or frightened.
- to stick in the craw — to be unacceptable or displeasing to someone
- to use shock tactics — to attempt to influence people by shocking them
- working relationship — a relationship with a colleague, boss or employee