12-letter words containing w, a, s, m
- saw palmetto — a shrublike palmetto, Serenoa repens, of the palm family, native to the southern U.S., having green or blue leafstalks set with spiny teeth.
- scram switch — (jargon) (From the nuclear power industry) An emergency power-off switch (see Big Red Switch), especially one positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. In general, this is *not* something you frob lightly; these often initiate expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed in a dinosaur pen for use in case of electrical fire or in case some luckless field servoid should put 120 volts across himself while Easter egging. SCRAM stands for Safety Control Rod Ax Man. In the early days of nuclear power, boron moderator rods were raised and lowered on ropes. In the event of a runaway chain reaction, a man with an axe would chop the rope and drop the rods into the nuclear pile to stop the reaction. See also molly-guard, TMRC.
- sea milkwort — a maritime plant, Glaux maritima, having small, pinkish-white flowers.
- seismic wave — a wave of energy that is generated by an earthquake or other earth vibration and that travels within the earth or along its surface.
- semantic web — an extension of the World Wide Web in which data is structured and XML-tagged on the basis of its meaning or content, so that computers can process and integrate the information without human intervention: the semantic Web acting as a global database or huge brain.
- servicewoman — a woman who is a member of the armed forces of a country.
- siamese twin — (not in technical use) conjoined twin.
- slumber wear — nightclothes
- small wonder — (I am) hardly surprised (that)
- smart growth — People such as architects and environmentalists use smart growth to refer to the construction of new buildings and roads within a town or city so that they are close to people's workplaces and mass transit systems and so that open spaces are not built on.
- st. matthews — a town in N Kentucky.
- stomach worm — a nematode, Haemonchus contortus, parasitic in the stomach of sheep, cattle, and related animals.
- swamp azalea — an azalea, Rhododendron viscosum, of the eastern U.S., having fragrant, white to pink or sometimes red flowers.
- swamp locust — water locust.
- swamp mallow — a rose mallow, Hibiscus moscheutos.
- swamp rabbit — any of several southern cottontails, especially Sylvilagus aquaticus, of swamps and lowlands.
- sweet almond — the nutlike kernel of the fruit of either of two trees, Prunus dulcis (sweet almond) or P. dulcis amara (bitter almond) which grow in warm temperate regions.
- sweet dreams — sleep well
- sweet marten — the European pine marten, Martes martes : trapped for its fur and now greatly reduced in number.
- swim bladder — air bladder (def 2).
- swimming cap — A swimming cap is a rubber cap which you wear to keep your hair dry when you are swimming.
- swiss-german — of or relating to a person from German-speaking Switzerland
- time-wasting — causing someone to spend time doing something that is unnecessary or does not produce any benefit
- wagon master — wagon boss.
- warehouseman — a person who stores goods for others for pay.
- warehousemen — Irregular plural form of warehouseman.
- water system — a river and all its branches.
- watermanship — the skill, duties, business, etc., of a waterman.
- west germany — a former republic in central Europe: created in 1949 by the coalescing of the British, French, and U.S. zones of occupied Germany established in 1945. 96,025 sq. mi. (248,706 sq. km). Capital: Bonn.
- westmoreland — William Childs [chahyldz] /tʃaɪldz/ (Show IPA), 1914–2005, U.S. army officer: commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam and Thailand 1964–68.
- what is more — moreover, in addition
- whatshername — A female person or entity, whose name one does not remember but that is known to the person to which one is speaking.
- whatshisname — Used to refer to a person whose name one cannot recall, does not know, or does not wish to specify.
- whimsicality — Also, whimsicalness. whimsical quality or character.
- white salmon — the yellowtail, Seriola lalandei.
- whitmanesque — of or like Walt Whitman, his style, or his outlook; often, specif., democratic, expansive, exuberant, etc.
- wild mustard — any of several weedy plants belonging to the genus Brassica, of the mustard family, as charlock.
- williamsburg — a city in SE Virginia: colonial capital of Virginia; now restored to its original pre-Revolutionary style.
- williamsport — a city in central Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River.
- witch's mark — devil's mark.
- with menaces — If someone commits the crime of demanding money with menaces, they threaten to cause harm unless they are given the money.
- woman-chaser — a philanderer; womanizer.
- womanishness — The state or condition of being womanish.
- womb-leasing — bearing a child on behalf of a couple unable to have a child; surrogacy
- women's wear — apparel and accessories for women.
- world-famous — famous throughout the world: a world-famous film.
- yukawa meson — a hypothetical elementary particle with finite rest mass, whose exchange between nucleons would account for the strong short-range forces between nucleons: subsequently identified as the pion.