14-letter words containing y, a, r, k
- penalty killer — a player used when the player's team is short-handed as a result of a penalty, especially a player skilled at defense and employed regularly in such situations.
- penalty stroke — a stroke added to a score for a rule infraction.
- play for keeps — to do something seriously and without showing any mercy
- pyjama cricket — one-day cricket, in which the players wear colourful clothing rather than the traditional whites used in longer forms of the game
- pyramidal peak — a sharp peak formed where the ridges separating three or more cirques intersect; horn
- railway worker — railroad employee
- rangeley lakes — chain of lakes in W Me. & NE N.H.
- ready reckoner — reckoner (def 2).
- ryukyu islands — a chain of 55 islands in the W Pacific, extending almost 650 km (400 miles) from S Japan to N Taiwan: an ancient kingdom, under Chinese rule from the late 14th century, invaded by Japan in the early 17th century, under full Japanese sovereignty from 1879 to 1945, and US control from 1945 to 1972; now part of Japan again. They are subject to frequent typhoons. Chief town: Naha (on Okinawa). Pop: 1 318 220 (2000). Area: 2196 sq km (849 sq miles)
- salary bracket — a given range or bracket of salaries within which the amount of pay earned by someone falls
- 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.
- shankaracharya — a.d. 789?–821? Hindu Vedantist philosopher and teacher.
- siberian husky — one of a Siberian breed of medium-size dogs having a thick, soft coat, raised originally as sled dogs.
- silky anteater — an arboreal, tropical American anteater, Cyclopes didactylus, about the size of a rat, having a prehensile tail, glossy, golden fur, and two toes on each forelimb.
- stay-in strike — sit-down strike.
- take away from — detract
- take inventory — count stock or belongings
- take years off — to make (someone) feel or look much younger
- tank destroyer — a high-speed, self-propelled, armored combat vehicle with antitank cannon.
- treasury stock — outstanding shares of stock reacquired and held by the issuing corporation.
- turkey buzzard — turkey vulture.
- vandyke collar — a wide collar of lace and linen with the edge formed into scallops or deep points.
- voluntary work — unpaid employment for a cause
- walk away from — to outdistance easily; defeat handily
- walkaround pay — extra pay earned by an employee for accompanying an official inspector on a plant tour or around a job site.
- yekaterinoslav — a former name of Dnepropetrovsk.
- yesterday week — a week yesterday; a week ago from yesterday
- yom kippur war — a war that began on Yom Kippur in 1973 with the attack of Israel by Egypt, Syria, and Iraq: Israel recovered most of its initial losses.