306 symbols beginning with S. Each one is read four ways, and every source is named so you can check it.
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- SermonA speech nobody may reply to, delivered weekly to people who mostly did not choose the subject.
- SneezingOne of the few things a body does that cannot be stopped once begun, and which has attracted more ritual response than any other reflex.
- Strange roomA room in your own house that you have never seen before, which is among the most commonly reported dreams there is and one of the most striking.
- SelkieA seal who becomes a woman by shedding a skin, and who is kept only by someone hiding it.
- SylphA spirit of the air, invented rather than inherited, and the only one of the four elemental beings with no folk tradition behind it.
- ScribeA person who writes what somebody else says, and whose errors outlive both of them.
- SextonThe keeper of a church and its ground, who rings the bell, digs the grave, and holds the keys to both.
- SacrificeGiving up something real to get something else, and the older sense in which the thing given up had to be valuable to count.
- SecrecyHolding something back on purpose, which is a relationship between people rather than a property of the thing held.
- SolitudeBeing alone by choice, which the dream distinguishes sharply from being alone by circumstance even when the room is identical.
- SurrenderStopping the resistance, which a dream generally presents as a relief before it presents it as a defeat.
- SextantAn instrument for finding your position by measuring the angle between a star and the horizon, which requires being able to see both.
- SickleA curved blade for cutting grain, held in one hand while the other gathers, so it is a tool that requires holding what you are about to cut.
- SowingPutting seed into ground you have opened, and then being unable to do anything further about it for months.
- SpindleA weighted stick that turns to twist fibre into thread, and the oldest machine most households owned.
- SitarA long-necked instrument with sympathetic strings that are never played, running under the main ones and sounding on their own.
- SackbutAn early trombone, the one wind instrument of its period that could play any note exactly, because the slide is not divided into steps.
- SinewTough fibrous tissue joining muscle to bone, and the material bowstrings and thread were made from long before it was a word for strength.
- SpleenAn organ that filters blood and stores it, and which a person can live without, and which English named a mood after anyway.
- SolsticeThe day the sun stops moving along the horizon and turns back, which is what the word says: the sun stands still.
- SunbeamA shaft of light made visible by what is floating in the air, so the beam is really a picture of dust.
- SequoiaA tree that lives for thousands of years and whose bark is thick enough that fire passes through the grove without killing it.
- SloeThe fruit of the blackthorn, too sour to eat raw, and traditionally not picked until after a frost has split the skins.
- SpruceA conifer grown in dense plantations for timber and pulp, and the tree most people picture when they picture a Christmas tree.
- SycamoreA tree whose name means two different species on two sides of an ocean, and neither of them is the one in the older texts.
- SnipeA wader that flies away in a fast zigzag when flushed, so hard to shoot that the people who could do it gave a word to the language.
- ShearwaterA seabird that comes ashore only at night, to burrows, and whose calls over the colony were taken for the voices of the dead.
- SnowdropA flower that comes up through frozen ground in the coldest weeks, and which folklore says must not be brought into a house.
- SnapdragonA garden flower whose bloom opens like a mouth when squeezed, and whose dried seed pods look unmistakably like small skulls.
- SilverfishA wingless insect that eats paper, glue and starch, and whose body plan is older than flowers, flight, and most of what is alive.
- SturgeonAn armoured fish older than the dinosaurs, slow to mature, and in England the property of the Crown wherever it is caught.
- SkateA flat cartilaginous fish whose egg case washes up as a black leathery purse, and whose body was cut and dried into fake monsters.
- SpringbokAn antelope that bounces stiff-legged into the air for no obvious reason, a behaviour with its own name and no settled explanation.
- SurveyorSomeone who turns ground into numbers, whose lines decide what belongs to whom and are believed over the fence that is actually there.
- SternThe back of a vessel, where the steering is, and where the name is written for anyone watching it go.
- ScreeA slope of loose broken rock that moves under your weight, so going up it costs more than the height suggests.
- SteppeDry grassland running for thousands of miles without a natural barrier, which made it a road for anyone with horses.
- StraitA narrow channel between two seas, where the whole traffic of an ocean is squeezed into a few miles of water.
- SandstoneRock made of grains cemented together, which is why it carves easily and why the weather takes it back a grain at a time.
- SerpentineA green mottled rock that polishes like marble and is soft enough to turn on a lathe, found where the sea floor has been pushed up onto land.
- ShaleRock made of mud, splitting into flat sheets along the bedding, each one a surface that was once the floor of somewhere still.
- SoapstoneA rock soft enough to cut with a knife, which holds heat for hours and was used for cooking vessels and bed warmers.
- ShinThe front of the lower leg, where the bone lies directly under the skin with nothing in between to protect it.
- SharpeningRemoving metal to make an edge, so the tool is improved by being made smaller and can only be improved so many times.
- SiftingPassing material through a mesh so that size does the sorting, which means the decision was made when the mesh was chosen.
- SalamanderAn amphibian believed to live in fire, because they sheltered in logs and ran out when the logs were put on a hearth.
- SatyrA follower of Dionysus, part man and part goat, whose whole function in the stories is appetite without restraint.
- SpriteA small spirit of a place, one of the many names for something local, minor and easily offended.
- SardineA small oily fish named after an island, whose way of being packed became a standard phrase for crowding.
- SaddlerA leatherworker making something that must fit two bodies at once, one of which cannot say whether it hurts.
- SarongA length of cloth wrapped and tucked rather than sewn, which can be a garment, a bag, a towel or a sunshade within an hour.
- SashA band worn across the body or round the waist to mark an office, a party or an achievement rather than to hold anything up.
- SergeA hard-wearing twill that gave the world denim, since serge de Nimes is where the word came from.
- SmockA loose overgarment worn to protect the clothes underneath, gathered at the chest by stitching that gives and lets the wearer move.
- SaxophoneA brass instrument with a single reed, made to bridge the gap between woodwind and brass, and named after the man who designed it.
- SavannahGrassland with scattered trees, held in that state by fire and by grazing rather than by climate alone.
- ShoalA shallow patch where a boat runs aground, and also a mass of fish, which is the same word doing two jobs.
- SolderAn alloy that melts at a lower temperature than the things it joins, so it can flow between them without damaging either.
- SardonyxA banded stone of red and white layers, cut so a pale figure stands out of a dark ground, which is what a cameo is.
- SemolinaThe coarse middle of durum wheat, left when the flour is sifted out, which turned out to be the useful part.
- SorrelA sharp lemony leaf whose acidity comes from oxalic acid, so it tastes of citrus in a country that grew none.
- SpeltAn old wheat whose grain stays wrapped in its husk, so it survives storage well and takes more work to get at.
- ShipwrightA builder of ships, whose whole craft is producing curves out of timber that grew straight.
- SilversmithA worker in a metal whose purity is certified by an office that cuts a mark into the finished piece, and destroys anything that fails.
- StonemasonA worker in stone divided into those who cut it at a bench and those who set it on the building, which are two different trades.
- StubbornnessRefusing to change position, which is called determination when it turns out well and this when it does not.
- SternumThe breastbone, which protects the heart and is also the bone a surgeon cuts through to reach it.
- ServalA cat with the longest legs relative to its body of any, and ears large enough to hunt entirely by sound.
- SchoonerA rig that let a large vessel be worked by a small crew, which is why it took over coastal trade almost completely.
- SloopThe simplest rig there is, one mast and two sails, which is why almost every small boat on the water is one.
- StratusA featureless layer of cloud, and the only cloud type most people have stood inside, because fog is stratus at ground level.
- SkuaA seabird that mostly does not fish, and instead harries other birds until they drop or bring up what they have caught.
- SiskinA small green finch that came into gardens within living memory, having previously kept to conifer woods.
- SparrowhawkA garden ambush hunter whose female is nearly twice the weight of the male, so the pair hunt entirely different prey.
- StonechatA small moorland bird named for a call that sounds exactly like two pebbles being knocked together.
- SpeedwellA tiny blue roadside flower whose petals fall almost as soon as it is picked, and whose name is a farewell.
- StoupA small basin of water by the door, dipped into on the way in, so the gesture is made before anything else happens.
- SummonsAn order to appear, which works by requiring presence rather than by compelling anything once you are there.
- SentenceThe punishment ordered by a court, from a word meaning an opinion or a feeling, so the term began as what somebody thought.
- SubpoenaAn order to attend or produce something, whose name is the threat: under penalty.
- SepulchreA tomb cut or built rather than dug, and a word that survives mostly in one phrase about looking clean on the outside.
- SieveA mesh that separates by size and holds nothing, and the standing image for a task that cannot be done.
- SkilletA pan that originally had three legs so it could stand in the fire, and lost them when the range arrived.
- SplintA rigid strip bound alongside a break to stop it moving, which does nothing to heal and everything to allow healing.
- StretcherCanvas between two poles, which needs two people, so the injured person's rescue depends on somebody finding a second.
- ScalpelA small knife made to be thrown away, because an edge that has been sharpened is never as fine as one that has not.
- ShuttleThe carrier that takes the thread across a loom and back, and which gave its name to everything that goes to and fro.
- SkeinYarn coiled loosely so it can be dyed and dried, and which turns into a knot the moment it is handled wrongly.
- SpearThe commonest weapon in human history, because it is a stick with a point and it outreaches everything cheaper.
- SlingA strap and a stone, which is the cheapest weapon there is and was lethal at ranges an untrained archer could not manage.
- ScabbardA sheath for a blade, which protects the carrier from the edge at least as much as it protects the edge.
- StockadeA wall of upright stakes, which is the fastest permanent defence there is because it needs only timber and digging.
- Seed drillA machine that places seed in rows at a set depth, replacing broadcasting by hand, where most of the seed was wasted.
- StileA way over a wall that lets people through and stops animals, so it is a gap and a barrier depending on who you are.
- SilageGrass preserved by being sealed and allowed to ferment, so the crop is kept by controlled spoiling rather than by drying.
- StencilA cut-out that paints through, whose whole difficulty is that the middle of an O has to be held on by something.
- SkittlesNine pins stood up in order so that a ball can knock them down, which is the oldest shape a game can have.
- SeesawA plank on a pivot, where nobody rises unless somebody else goes down, and the whole thing stops if one end gets off.
- ShiverThe body shaking itself to make heat, which is why the same movement arrives with cold and with fear and means two different things.
- SatchelA bag with a strap across the body, which leaves both hands free and marks the person carrying it as somebody on the way somewhere.
- Sealing waxWax dripped across a fold and stamped, which does not lock the letter but makes it impossible to open one without saying so.
- StampA small square of paper that moved the cost of a letter from the person receiving it to the person sending it, and so changed who could write to whom.
- SootThe part of the fuel that did not burn, carried up and stuck to everything on the way, which makes it a record of inefficiency.
- SparkToo small to be a fire and the only way any fire has ever started, which makes it the most disproportionate object there is.
- SmoulderBurning without flame, slowly and inside something, which is how a fire hides for hours before anybody knows it is there.
- ScreechA sound pitched in exactly the band the ear is worst at ignoring, which is why it is used for brakes, for alarms and for owls.