18-letter words containing t, e, p, i
- september holidays — a period of time in September when people do not have to go to school, college or work
- septic sore throat — an acute, toxic, streptococcus infection of the throat producing fever, tonsillitis, and other serious effects.
- service department — a repair shop
- set priority level — (SPL) The way traditional Unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt priority levels and thus blocking lower level interrupts.
- shape-note singing — a traditional style of a capella singing using shape-note notation.
- shepherd satellite — a small moon orbiting near a planetary ring, whose gravitational pull helps confine the ring and the ring's extent.
- shipping container — a large, strong container, usually of metal, used to store goods in during shipment
- shipping documents — documents relating to the sending of a shipment of goods, for example containing details of contents, weight, value etc.
- shoot from the hip — the act of shooting with a bow, firearm, etc.
- shotgun microphone — a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity.
- shunting operation — an operation in which rail coaches are manoeuvred
- silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
- simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
- sit up like jackie — to sit bolt upright, esp cheekily
- sling psychrometer — a psychrometer so designed that the wet-bulb thermometer can be ventilated, to expedite evaporation, by whirling in the air.
- slip of the tongue — If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake.
- slow-motion replay — a showing again in slow motion of a sequence of action, esp of part of a sporting contest immediately after it happens
- sodium hyposulfite — sodium thiosulfate.
- solitary sandpiper — a North American sandpiper, Tringa solitaria, of inland wetlands, having a brownish-gray, white-spotted back and whitish underparts.
- something to spare — a surplus of something
- sonic depth finder — a sonar instrument that uses echolocation to measure depths under water.
- spaghetti junction — an interchange, usually between motorways, in which there are a large number of underpasses and overpasses and intersecting roads used by a large volume of high-speed traffic
- special assessment — a tax levied by a local government on private property to pay the cost of local public improvements, as sidewalk construction or sewage disposal, that are of general benefit to the property taxed.
- special collection — a collection of materials segregated from a general library collection according to form, subject, age, condition, rarity, source, or value.
- special prosecutor — (formerly) an independent counsel.
- special relativity — the state or fact of being relative.
- specialist teacher — a teacher with expertise in working with children with special educational needs, such as dyslexia
- specific viscosity — a measure of the resistance to flow of a fluid, expressed as the ratio of the absolute viscosity of the fluid to that of a reference fluid (usually water in the case of liquids)
- specimen signature — a signature to be compared to an original signature in order to verify someone's identity
- spectrocolorimetry — the quantitative measure of colors by spectrophotometry.
- spectrofluorimeter — an instrument in which the spectrum of secondarily emitted fluorescent light is used to identify chemical compounds.
- spectroheliography — the process of obtaining an image of the sun in light of a particular wavelength, such as calcium or hydrogen, showing the distribution of the element over the surface and in the solar atmosphere, using a spectroheliograph
- spectropolarimeter — an instrument for determining the extent to which plane-polarized light of various wavelengths is rotated by certain solutions, consisting of a combination of a spectroscope and a polarimeter.
- spectropolariscope — an instrument combining the functions of a spectroscope with those of a polariscope.
- speech recognition — Computers. the computerized analysis of spoken words in order to identify the speaker, as in security systems, or to respond to voiced commands: the analysis is performed by finding patterns in the spectrum of the incoming sound and comparing them with stored patterns of elements of sound, as phones, or of complete words.
- speech synthesizer — device that imitates human voice
- sperry corporation — (company) The company which merged with the Burroughs Corporation to form Unisys Corporation. Divisions included Sperry Univac, Sperry Flight Systems, and others. Some of these were sold off after the merger.
- spherical geometry — the branch of geometry that deals with figures on spherical surfaces.
- spherical triangle — a triangle formed by arcs of great circles of a sphere.
- spike-tooth harrow — a harrow equipped with straight teeth on horizontal bars, usually employed to smooth and level plowed soil or seedbeds for planting or sowing.
- spinal anaesthesia — anaesthesia of the lower half of the body produced by injecting an anaesthetic beneath the arachnoid membrane surrounding the spinal cord
- split-level cooker — a cooker that is designed with a separate oven and hob so that they can be fitted wherever is most convenient in the kitchen
- status epilepticus — a condition in which repeated epileptic seizures occur without the patient gaining consciousness between them. If untreated for a prolonged period it can lead to long-term disability or death
- stepping-off place — jumping-off place (def 2).
- subatomic particle — physics:
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- super middleweight — a boxer weighing up to 168 pounds (75.6 kg), between middleweight and light heavyweight.
- superstring theory — any supersymmetric string theory in which each type of elementary particle is treated as a vibration of a single fundamental string (superstring) at a particular frequency.
- supporting actress — an actress playing a supporting role
- supportive therapy — any treatment, such as the intravenous administration of certain fluids, designed to reinforce or sustain the physiological well-being of a patient