17-letter words that end in ge
- northeast passage — a ship route along the N coast of Europe and Asia, between the North Sea and the Pacific.
- northwest passage — a ship route along the Arctic coast of Canada and Alaska, joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
- on a razor's edge — in an acute dilemma
- open-end mortgage — a mortgage agreement against which new sums of money may be borrowed under certain conditions.
- orifice discharge — Orifice discharge is a model for calculating how quickly a fluid will come out of a punctured vessel or pipe.
- pauline privilege — (in canon law) the privilege given to converts to dissolve a marriage with an unbaptized spouse if either obstructs the religious practices of the other.
- perforation gauge — a marked ruler used to measure the number of perforations per unit length along the borders of a stamp.
- poor man's orange — a grapefruit
- postural drainage — a therapy for clearing congested lungs by placing the patient in a position for drainage by gravity, often accompanied by percussion with hollowed hands.
- proficiency badge — an insignia or device granted by the Girl Scouts and worn especially on a uniform to indicate special achievement.
- proof of coverage — A policyholder's proof of coverage is a document from an insurer stating that they have insurance coverage.
- putative marriage — a marriage contracted in violation of an impediment, but in good faith on the part of one or both of the contracting persons.
- reading knowledge — the ability to read a language, but not speak it
- same-sex marriage — (broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage: Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times. See Word Story at the current entry.
- sea grant college — a college or university doing research on marine resources under the U.S. National Sea Grant College and Program Act of 1966.
- severance package — an amount of compensation paid by an organization to an employee who leaves because, through no fault of their own, the job to which they were appointed ceases to exist, as during rationalization, and no comparable job is available to them
- sheepswool sponge — wool sponge.
- special privilege — exclusive advantage
- suspension bridge — a bridge having a deck suspended from cables anchored at their extremities and usually raised on towers.
- sweet mock orange — the syringa, Philadelphus coronarius.
- symbolic language — a specialized language dependent upon the use of symbols for communication and created for the purpose of achieving greater exactitude, as in symbolic logic or mathematics.
- teachers' college — a college, usually having a four-year curriculum and granting a bachelor's degree, for training teachers for elementary and secondary schools
- technical college — school of further and vocational education
- telephone message — a message that is transmitted by telephone
- television lounge — a room in a hotel, guest house, etc where guests may watch television
- temperature gauge — a device which shows the temperature or heat of something
- the humber bridge — a single-span suspension bridge (1981) that crosses the Humber, with a main span of 1410 m (4626 ft)
- the neolithic age — the last part of the Stone Age, where metal tools became widespread
- to best advantage — If something is shown to good advantage or to best advantage, it is shown in a way that reveals its best features.
- tree of knowledge — the tree whose fruit Adam and Eve tasted in disobedience of God: Gen. 2, 3
- trifoliate orange — a spiny, Chinese orange tree, Poncirus trifoliata, used as a stock in grafting and for hedges.
- unix brain damage — Something that has to be done to break a network program (typically a mailer) on a non-Unix system so that it will interoperate with Unix systems. The hack may qualify as "Unix brain damage" if the program conforms to published standards and the Unix program in question does not. Unix brain damage happens because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming behaviour than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of Unix systems out there. An example of Unix brain damage is a kluge in a mail server to recognise bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened jock weep.
- user brain damage — (humour) (UBD) A description (usually abbreviated) used to close a trouble report obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare pilot error; opposite: PBD; see also brain-damaged, PEBCAK.
- vaginal discharge — emission from the female genitalia
- verkhoyansk range — a mountain range in the Sakha Republic, in E Siberia, Russia. About 600 miles (970 km) long.
- wheatstone bridge — a circuit for measuring an unknown resistance by comparing it with known resistances.
- youth-and-old-age — a stiff-growing, erect composite plant, Zinnia elegans, of Mexico, having large, solitary flowers with yellow-to-purple disks and usually red rays.