19-letter words that end in s
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- james gould cozzens — James Gould, 1903–78, U.S. novelist.
- japanese lawn grass — an Asiatic creeping grass, Zoysia japonica, used especially in the southeastern U.S., having purplish spikelets and rootstalks that send up numerous tough, wiry shoots.
- jehovah's witnesses — a Christian sect, founded in the U.S. in the late 19th century, that believes in the imminent destruction of the world's wickedness and the establishment of a theocracy under God's rule.
- jimenez de cisneros — Francisco [frahn-thees-kaw] /frɑnˈθis kɔ/ (Show IPA), 1436–1517, Spanish cardinal and statesman.
- johannes damascenus — Johannes [joh-han-eez,, -is] /dʒoʊˈhæn iz,, -ɪs/ (Show IPA), John of Damascus, Saint.
- john maynard keynes — John Maynard, 1st Baron, 1883–1946, English economist and writer.
- jump to conclusions — to come to a conclusion prematurely, without sufficient thought or on incomplete evidence
- keep up appearances — If you keep up appearances, you try to behave and dress in a way that people expect of you, even if you can no longer afford it.
- kick up one's heels — the back part of the human foot, below and behind the ankle.
- knights hospitalers — a member of the religious and military order (Knights Hospitalers or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem) originating about the time of the first Crusade (1096–99) and taking its name from a hospital at Jerusalem.
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- komandorski islands — a group of islands in the Bering Sea, in NE Russia, E of the Kamchatka Peninsula: U.S.-Japan naval battle, 1943.
- lakshadweep islands — a group of 26 coral islands and reefs in the Arabian Sea, off the SW coast of India: a union territory of India since 1956. Administrative centre: Kavaratti Island. Pop: 60 595 (2001). Area: 28 sq km (11 sq miles)
- lay down one's arms — to stop fighting; surrender
- lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- leisure occupations — activities which you enjoy and which you perform in your free time
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- lipopolysaccharides — Plural form of lipopolysaccharide.
- liquorice all-sorts — a brand of assorted sweets containing liquorice as well as coloured candy made of sugar, gelatine, and coconut
- lucent technologies — (company, telecommunications, Unix) The former systems and equipment portion of AT&T (including Bell Laboratories), split off in 1996.
- lupus erythematosus — any of several autoimmune diseases, especially systemic lupus erythematosus, characterized by red, scaly skin patches.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- lytham saint anne's — a resort in NW England, in Lancashire on the Irish Sea. Pop: 41 327 (2001)
- magnetic hysteresis — hysteresis in a ferromagnetic material; the lag in the response of magnetic induction to changes of magnetic intensity.
- maraschino cherries — cherries in a syrup flavored with maraschino or, now usually, imitation maraschino
- master of foxhounds — the person responsible for the conduct of a fox hunt and to whom all members of the hunt and its staff are responsible. Abbreviation: M.F.H.
- master of the rolls — (in England and Wales) the judge who presides over the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) and who was formerly Keeper of the Records at the Public Record Office
- matthias i corvinus — ?1440–90, king of Hungary (1458–90): built up the most powerful kingdom in Central Europe. A patron of Renaissance art, he founded the Corvina library, one of the finest in Europe
- meningoencephalitis — Inflammation of the membranes of the brain and the adjoining cerebral tissue.
- mermaid's wineglass — a colony of green algae, Acetabularia crenulata, of warm seas, having a cup-shaped cap on a slender stalk.
- micromesh stockings — stockings made from a material consisting of a fine mesh
- miscellaneous items — various kinds of thing, esp small purchases
- mother-of-thousands — strawberry geranium.
- mucopolysaccharides — Plural form of mucopolysaccharide.
- multimedia analysis — Multimedia analysis is the consideration of all possible risks relating to pollution and waste management.
- music to one's ears — something that is very pleasant to hear
- narcotics anonymous — an organization that helps drug users recover from drug addiction
- national characters — (character) Characters with accents and other diacritical marks that are used in certain written languages (that are based on the Roman alphabet) but not in others, particularly not in English. A standard list is ISO Latin 1.
- neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon) The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
- neuropsychodynamics — The theoretical synthesis of neuroscience and psychodynamics.
- newtonian mechanics — the branch of mechanics that is based on Newton's laws of motion and that is applicable to systems that are so large that Planck's constant can be regarded as negligibly small (distinguished from quantum mechanics).
- newtown st boswells — a village in SE Scotland, administrative centre of Scottish Borders: agricultural centre. Pop: 1199 (2001)
- nicolaus copernicus — Nicolaus [nik-uh-ley-uh s] /ˌnɪk əˈleɪ əs/ (Show IPA), (Mikolaj Kopernik) 1473–1543, Polish astronomer who promulgated the now accepted theory that the earth and the other planets move around the sun (the Copernican System)
- non-contemporaneous — living or occurring during the same period of time; contemporary.
- notre-dame-de-paris — Also called Notre Dame de Paris [French naw-truh dam duh pa-ree] /French nɔ trə dam də paˈri/ (Show IPA). a famous early gothic cathedral in Paris (started 1163).
- noughts and crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- noughts-and-crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- novell data systems — (company) A small computer hardware company building CP/M Z80-based systems. They later went on to become Novell, Inc. and develop Novell Netware.