14-letter words containing s, o, t, h, a, y
- sacred history — history that is retold with the aim of instilling religious faith and which may or may not be founded on fact
- scholastically — of or relating to schools, scholars, or education: scholastic attainments.
- scratch monkey — (humour) As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
- shoo-fly plant — apple of Peru.
- shooting party — a social gathering when people shoot game together
- shrove tuesday — the last day of Shrovetide, long observed as a season of merrymaking before Lent.
- slaughterously — murderously
- sobriety coach — a person who is employed to help another to refrain from drinking alcohol
- social history — a view of historical events seen in terms of social trends
- south ayrshire — a council area of SW Scotland, on the Firth of Clyde: comprises the S part of the historical county of Ayrshire; formerly part of Strathclyde Region (1975–96): chiefly agricultural, with fishing and tourism. Administrative centre: Ayr. Pop: 111 580 (2003 est). Area: 1202 sq km (464 sq miles)
- south-easterly — A south-easterly point, area, or direction is to the south-east or towards the south-east.
- sphaerocrystal — a spherical crystalline mass
- st. john's day — the saint's day of St. John the Baptist, celebrated on June 24, being one of the four quarter days in England.
- staphylococcus — any of several spherical bacteria of the genus Staphylococcus, occurring in pairs, tetrads, and irregular clusters, certain species of which, as S. aureus, can be pathogenic for humans.
- staphyloplasty — plastic surgery or surgical repair involving the soft palate or the uvula
- sycophantishly — in a sycophantish manner
- symmetrophobia — an avoidance of symmetry, esp in Japanese art and Egyptian temples
- synoptic chart — a chart showing the distribution of meteorological conditions over a wide region at a given moment.
- synthesization — to form (a material or abstract entity) by combining parts or elements (opposed to analyze): to synthesize a statement.
- thalassography — oceanography, especially that branch dealing with smaller bodies of water, as bays, sounds, and gulfs.
- that is to say — in other words
- the lord's day — the Christian Sabbath; Sunday
- there's no way — If you say there's no way that something will happen, you are emphasizing that you think it will definitely not happen.
- thermoanalysis — thermal analysis.
- thermodynamics — the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy or work, and the conversion of one into the other: modern thermodynamics deals with the properties of systems for the description of which temperature is a necessary coordinate.
- thomas younger — Thomas Coleman ("Cole") 1844–1916, U.S. outlaw, associated with Jesse James.
- thymelaeaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Thymelaeaceae, a family of trees and shrubs having tough acrid bark and simple leaves: includes spurge laurel, leatherwood, and mezereon
- thysanopterous — of or relating to the Thysanoptera genus of insects which are characterized by fringed wings
- trachyspermous — having seeds with a rough coat.
- try one's hand — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- unpraiseworthy — not worthy of praise
- vasoinhibitory — an agent, as a drug, that inhibits the action of the vasomotor nerves.
- x short of a y — If you say that someone is, for example, several cards short of a full deck or one sandwich short of a picnic, you think they are stupid, foolish, or crazy.