| socage | n. | tenure of land by rent or service not including military service | ||
| sockdolager | n. | knockout blow, decisive argument or reply; unusually heavy or large thing | ||
| sodality | n. | companionship, fellowship; an association; society for Catholic laypeople | ||
| soffit | n. | under surface of architectural feature, such as a lintel, architrave, vault, or arch | ||
| sogering | v. | goldbricking, shirking hard work | obsolete | |
| soigné | adj. | well-groomed, fashionably made up | ||
| soilure | n. | act of soiling; staining, dirtiness | ||
| solecism | n. | grammatical error; breach of good manners; any inconsistency or error | ||
| solfeggio | n. | do-re-mi system of learning notes of the scale | ||
| solideme | n. | undivided unhyphenated compound word | ||
| soothmoother | n. | outsider | Scots | |
| sorb | n. | fruit-bearing deciduous tree of the old world, the service tree; the fruit of this tree | ||
| sorites | n. | series of propositions or syllogisms where each conclusion becomes the subject of the next | rhetoric | |
| sorn | v. | to sponge off, to mooch | Scots | |
| sorted | adj. | completed, organized, arranged | ||
| sotadic | adj. | of erotic or pornographic material (after Sotades, the first known Greek erotic poet) | ||
| soteriology | n. | doctrine of salvation | ||
| sotto voce | adv. | in an undertone, in a quiet voice, quietly | ||
| soubise | n. | onion sauce | ||
| soubrette | n. | lady’s maid in a theatrical production; maidservant | ||
| sough | v. | to sigh, to murmur, to make a rushing or murmuring sound | ||
| soup and fish | n. | tuxedo, evening clothes | slang | |
| souse | v. | to immerse or plunge something in water, etc.; to drench; to pickle in brine, etc. | ||
| soutane | n. | cassock of Roman Catholic clergy | ||
| spadix | n. | spike of tiny flowers | botany | |
| spadroon | n. | straight single-edged light sword of the 18th and 19th Centuries | ||
| Spahi | n. | French light cavalry formed primarily from natives from the Maghreb | ||
| spancel | n. | noosed rope used to hobble an animal | ||
| spandrel | n. | (architecture) space between arch and a rectangle enclosing that arch; space between extradoses of adjacent arches | ||
| spaniel | n. | fawning, submissive person | ||
| spark out | adj. | entirely unconscious | British | |
| sparrow-fart | n. | sunrise, dawn, very early in the day; useless person or thing | idiom | |
| spate | n. | flood, esp. sudden flooding of a river caused by heavy precipitation | British | |
| spathe | n. | large bract enclosing the flower bundle or spadix of some plants | ||
| spavined | adj. | afflicted with spavin, bony growth on lower hock joints of horses; lame, halt; decrepit | ||
| speak | v. | to communicate with at sea through semaphore or sound | nautical | |
| speccy | adj. | derogatory descriptor of one wearing glasses | slang | |
| specie | n. | coined money | ||
| specific | n. | particular remedy | ||
| spencer | n. | short tight jacket of 19th century, often trimmed with fur when worn by women and children | ||
| spicule | n. | tiny pointy thing, usu. in groups; huge gas jet shooting from surface of the sun | ||
| spikenard | n. | aromatic ointment derived from plant of the valerian family; such a plant | ||
| spile | n. | large wooden piling; wooden plug used as a spigot; to tap (a tree, a keg) by means of a spile | ||
| spillikins | n. | jackstraws, pick-up sticks | ||
| spindly | adj. | long and thin, esp. someone or something seeming weak or fragile | ||
| spinney | n. | small thicket | British | |
| spissitude | n. | density, thickness | ||
| spit | n. | measure based on length of a gardening spade | ||
| spital | n. | place for care of sick charity cases | ||
| splanchnomancy | n. | divination by examination of human entrails from victim sacrificed for that purpose |
