14-letter words containing t, a, k, e, h, c
- phosphate rock — phosphorite.
- rathke's pouch — an invagination of stomodeal ectoderm developing into the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
- 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.
- sickle feather — one of the paired, elongated, sickle-shaped, middle feathers of the tail of the rooster.
- stack the deck — a more or less orderly pile or heap: a precariously balanced stack of books; a neat stack of papers.
- starch blocker — a substance ingested in the belief that it inhibits the body's ability to metabolize starch and thereby promotes weight loss: declared illegal in the U.S. by the FDA.
- stock exchange — a building or place where stocks and other securities are bought and sold.
- straightjacket — to put in or as in a straitjacket: Her ambition was straitjacketed by her family.
- take the chair — to preside as chairman for a meeting, etc
- take the count — to be unable to continue after a count of ten
- the all blacks — the international Rugby Union football team of New Zealand
- the black belt — a region of the southern US extending from Georgia across central Alabama and Mississippi, in which the population contains a large number of Black people: also noted for its fertile black soil
- the black caps — the international cricket team of New Zealand
- the black isle — a peninsula in NE Scotland, in Highland council area, between the Cromarty and Moray Firths
- the ice blacks — the international ice hockey team of New Zealand
- the upper back — the part of the back between the shoulders
- the-peacemaker — (Albert Edward"the Peacemaker") 1841–1910, king of Great Britain and Ireland 1901–10 (son of Queen Victoria).
- ticket machine — automated ticket dispenser
- to change tack — If you change tack or try a different tack, you try a different method for dealing with a situation.
- tomato ketchup — sauce made from tomatoes
- trickle charge — a continuous, slow charge supplied to a storage battery to keep it in a fully charged state.
- white charlock — a related plant, Raphanus raphanistrum, with yellow, mauve, or white flowers and podlike fruits
- wild buckwheat — umbrella plant (def 3).