18-letter words containing s, p, i, n, e
- to lick into shape — If you lick, knock, or whip someone or something into shape, you use whatever methods are necessary to change or improve them so that they are in the condition that you want them to be in.
- to pick and choose — If you pick and choose, you carefully choose only things that you really want and reject the others.
- to scrape a living — If you say that someone scrapes a living or scratches a living, you mean that they manage to earn enough to live on, but it is very difficult. In American English, you say they scrape out a living or scratch out a living.
- to speak your mind — If you speak your mind, you say firmly and honestly what you think about a situation, even if this may offend or upset people.
- to spill the beans — If you spill the beans, you tell someone something that people have been trying to keep secret.
- torsion-free group — a group in which every element other than the identity has infinite order.
- transient response — A transient response of a circuit is a temporary change in the way that it behaves due to an external excitation, that will disappear with time.
- transporter bridge — a bridge for carrying passengers and vehicles by means of a platform suspended from a trolley.
- under-compensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- up to one's tricks — If you say that someone is up to their tricks or up to their old tricks, you disapprove of them because they are behaving in the dishonest or deceitful way in which they typically behave.
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- visible panty line — the line of someone's underwear which can be seen through trousers
- visiting professor — a professor from another institution invited to teach at a university or college for a limited period, usually for a semester or one academic year.
- weberian apparatus — (in certain fishes) a chain of small bones and ligaments connecting the inner ear with the air bladder.
- welland ship canal — a ship canal in S Canada, in Ontario, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario: 8 locks. 25 miles (40 km) long.
- wernicke's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Wernicke's area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.
- western hemisphere — the western part of the terrestrial globe, including North and South America, their islands, and the surrounding waters.
- western isles pony — a breed of large pony, typically grey, with a dense waterproof coat. The only surviving variety is the Eriskay pony
- whispering gallery — a space or gallery beneath a dome or broad arch in which low sounds produced at any of certain points are clearly audible at certain other distant points.
- white iron pyrites — marcasite
- wild passionflower — the maypop, Passiflora incarnata.
- wilson's phalarope — a phalarope, Phalaropus tricolor, that breeds in the prairie regions of North America and winters in Argentina and Chile.
- wireless telephone — Now Rare. radiotelephony.
- wireless telephony — Now Rare. radiotelephony.
- women at point sur — a narrative poem (1927) by Robinson Jeffers.
- working hypothesis — See under hypothesis (def 1).