14-letter words containing s, y, r, o
- prognostically — of or relating to prognosis.
- progressionary — relating to progression
- prosthetically — a device, either external or implanted, that substitutes for or supplements a missing or defective part of the body.
- protopresbyter — a title given to distinguished priests.
- provisionality — providing or serving for the time being only; existing only until permanently or properly replaced; temporary: a provisional government.
- proximity fuse — an electronically triggered device designed to detonate an explosive charge in a missile, etc, at a predetermined distance from the target
- pseudoprostyle — having a colonnade at each end, either very close to the front wall or engaged in it.
- pseudosymmetry — an apparent symmetry different from that appropriate to a crystal of a given mineral.
- psycho-history — history or the writing of history employing the techniques of psychoanalysis to explore motivations, explain actions, etc.
- psychographics — the use of demographics to determine the attitudes and tastes of a particular segment of a population, as in marketing studies.
- psychoneurosis — neurosis (def 1).
- pyelonephritis — inflammation of the kidney and its pelvis, caused by a bacterial infection.
- pyelonephrosis — any disease of the kidney and its pelvis.
- pygmy marmoset — a related form, Cebuella pygmaea: the smallest monkey, inhabiting tropical forests of the Amazon
- pyramidologist — a person who believes in pyramidology
- pyrenomycetous — of or relating to the former class Pyrenomycetes of fungi
- pyrophosphoric — as in pyrophosphoric acid, a type of acid
- pythagoreanism — the doctrines of Pythagoras and his followers, especially the belief that the universe is the manifestation of various combinations of mathematical ratios.
- querimoniously — in a querimonious manner
- radiochemistry — the chemical study of radioactive elements, both natural and artificial, and their use in the study of chemical processes.
- raise eyebrows — cause surprise
- rambunctiously — difficult to control or handle; wildly boisterous: a rambunctious child.
- read-only user — (jargon) Describes a luser who uses computers almost exclusively for reading Usenet, bulletin boards, and/or electronic mail, rather than writing code or purveying useful information. See twink, terminal junkie, lurker.
- recompensatory — serving to compensate, as for loss, lack, or injury.
- recovery stock — a security that has fallen in price but is believed to have the ability to recover
- responsibility — the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management.
- restiform body — a cordlike bundle of nerve fibers lying on each side of the medulla oblongata and connecting it with the cerebellum.
- rhynchophorous — of or relating to rhynchophores
- rhythm section — band instruments, as drums or bass, that supply rhythm rather than harmony or melody.
- rna polymerase — an enzyme that synthesizes the formation of RNA from a DNA template during transcription.
- road stability — the extent to which a motor vehicle is stable and does not skid, esp at high speeds, or on sharp bends or wet roads
- rotary shutter — a camera shutter consisting of a rotating disk pierced with a slit that passes in front of the lens to expose the film or plate.
- royal highness — a title used prior to 1917 and designating a brother, sister, child, grandchild, aunt, or uncle belonging to the male line of the royal family. a title used since 1917 and designating a child or grandchild of the sovereign. any person given this title by the Crown.
- royal standard — a flag bearing the arms of the British sovereign, flown only when she (or he) is present
- rsa encryption — (cryptography, algorithm) A public-key cryptosystem for both encryption and authentication, invented in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. Its name comes from their initials. The RSA algorithm works as follows. Take two large prime numbers, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1), and find its reciprocal mod (p-1)(q-1), and call this d. Thus ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n, e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n, e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA.
- saccharomycete — a single-celled yeast of the family Saccharomycetaceae, having no mycelium.
- sacred history — history that is retold with the aim of instilling religious faith and which may or may not be founded on fact
- sacrilegiously — pertaining to or involving sacrilege: sacrilegious practices.
- sacrococcygeal — relating to the sacrum and the coccyx
- safety officer — The safety officer in a company or an organization is the person who is responsible for the safety of the people who work or visit there.
- salvation army — an international Christian organization founded in England in 1865 by William Booth, organized along quasi-military lines and devoted chiefly to evangelism and to providing social services, especially to the poor.
- sanitary towel — sanitary napkin.
- satisfactorily — giving or affording satisfaction; fulfilling all demands or requirements: a satisfactory solution.
- sauropterygian — any of various Mesozoic marine reptiles of the superorder Sauropterygia, including the suborder Plesiosauria.
- school library — a library within a school where teachers and students have access to books and other resources
- sclerophyllous — Also, sclerophyllous [skleer-uh-fil-uh s] /ˌsklɪər əˈfɪl əs/ (Show IPA). of, relating to, or exhibiting sclerophylly.
- scoresby sound — a heavily indented arm of the Norwegian Sea in E Greenland.
- 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.
- screw conveyor — a device for moving loose materials, consisting of a shaft with a broad, helically wound blade rotating in a tube or trough.
- sea gooseberry — a comb jelly, especially of the genus Pleurobrachia.