0%

14-letter words containing y, s, a

  • savanna monkey — any of several common, closely allied long-tailed monkeys of African savannas ranging from Senegal to South Africa, including the green monkey, grivet, tantalus, and vervet, which are sometimes considered subspecies and classified together as Cercopithecus aethiops.
  • scaly anteater — pangolin.
  • scarcity value — increased value due to the inadequate supply of something
  • scenic railway — a railroad that carries its passengers on a brief tour of an amusement park, resort, etc.
  • sceuophylacium — a place where sacred vessels are kept
  • scheme library — (library)   (SLIB) A portable Scheme library providing compatibiliy and utility functions for all standard Scheme implementations. Version 2c5 supports Bigloo, Chez, ELK, GAMBIT, MacScheme, MITScheme, PocketScheme, RScheme, Scheme->C, Scheme48, SCM, SCSH, T3.1, UMB-Scheme, and VSCM.
  • scholastically — of or relating to schools, scholars, or education: scholastic attainments.
  • school library — a library within a school where teachers and students have access to books and other resources
  • scientifically — of or relating to science or the sciences: scientific studies.
  • 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.
  • sea gooseberry — a comb jelly, especially of the genus Pleurobrachia.
  • secondary beam — a beam of particles of one kind selected from the group of particles produced when a beam of particles from an accelerator (primary beam) strikes a target.
  • secondary cell — storage cell.
  • secondary gain — any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness (distinguished from primary gain).
  • secondary road — a road less important than a main road or highway.
  • secondary wall — the innermost part of a plant cell wall, deposited after the wall has ceased to increase in surface area.
  • secondary wave — a transverse earthquake wave that travels through the interior of the earth and is usually the second conspicuous wave to reach a seismograph.
  • secretary bird — a large, long-legged, raptorial bird, Sagittarius serpentarius, of Africa, that feeds on reptiles.
  • secure tenancy — the letting of a dwelling by a nonprivate landlord, usually a local council or housing association, under an agreement that allows security of tenure, subletting, improvements made to the property by the tenant without consequent rent increase, and the right to buy the dwelling at a discount after three years' occupancy
  • security guard — a uniformed guard employed by a bank, airport, office building, etc., to maintain security.
  • self-laudatory — containing or expressing praise: overwhelmed by the speaker's laudatory remarks.
  • self-parodying — given to or involving self-parody
  • self-stability — the state or quality of being stable.
  • semi-legendary — somewhat legendary; having something of the nature of a legend; almost legendary
  • semi-paralysis — Pathology. a loss or impairment of voluntary movement in a body part, caused by injury or disease of the nerves, brain, or spinal cord. a disease characterized by this, especially palsy.
  • semi-paralyzed — to affect with paralysis.
  • semiofficially — in a semiofficial manner
  • semiologically — in a semiological manner; in a way that pertains to semiology
  • sentimentality — the quality or state of being sentimental or excessively sentimental.
  • sergiyev posad — a city in the NW Russian Federation in Europe, NE of Moscow.
  • seronegativity — the quality or state of being seronegative
  • serviceability — capable of or being of service; useful.
  • sesquipedality — given to using long words.
  • seward's folly — the purchase of Alaska in 1867, through the negotiations of Secretary of State W. H. Seward.
  • seyfert galaxy — one of a group of spiral galaxies with compact, bright nuclei having characteristically broad emission lines suggestive of very hot gases in violent motion at the center.
  • shabby-genteel — trying to maintain dignity and self-respect despite shabbiness.
  • shabby-looking — appearing old and in bad condition
  • shankaracharya — a.d. 789?–821? Hindu Vedantist philosopher and teacher.
  • sherry vinegar — a gourmet wine vinegar produced in the Jerez region of S Spain
  • ship's company — company (def 11).
  • shoo-fly plant — apple of Peru.
  • shooting party — a social gathering when people shoot game together
  • shove-ha'penny — a shuffleboard game played with coins or brass disks that are pushed by the hand and thumb down a board toward a scoring pit.
  • shrove tuesday — the last day of Shrovetide, long observed as a season of merrymaking before Lent.
  • siberian husky — one of a Siberian breed of medium-size dogs having a thick, soft coat, raised originally as sled dogs.
  • silicon valley — the area in northern California, southwest of San Francisco in the Santa Clara valley region, where many of the high-technology design and manufacturing companies in the semiconductor industry are concentrated.
  • 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.
  • simplistically — characterized by extreme simplism; oversimplified: a simplistic notion of good and bad.
  • simultaneously — existing, occurring, or operating at the same time; concurrent: simultaneous movements; simultaneous translation.
  • sinistrorsally — in a sinistrorsal manner
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?