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Seljuk caravanserais
Seljuk caravanserais are fortified roadside inns built under Seljuk rule, above all in Anatolia from the 1180s to the 1280s, offering merchants free food and three days' lodging.
Selvage
Selvage, also spelled selvedge, is the self-finished lengthwise edge of woven fabric, formed on the loom where the weft turns back, that resists fraying without hemming.
Semla
Semla (plural semlor, also fettisdagsbulle or fastlagsbulle): Swedish cardamom wheat bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, eaten around Shrove Tuesday; origin a medieval Lenten bread, cream form from the late 19th century.
Semolina
Semolina is the coarse granular milling product of durum wheat, defined by sieve size and ash limits in US and Codex standards, used for dried pasta, couscous, porridge, and Indian rava dishes.
Sen no Rikyū (千利休)
Sen no Rikyū (千利休), also Sen Rikyu, was a 16th-century Japanese tea master from Sakai who perfected wabi-cha and served Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Sencha (煎茶)
Sencha (煎茶) is Japan's most common green tea, made by steaming, rolling, and drying fresh leaves. Created by Nagatani Sōen in 1738; distinct from shaded gyokuro and powdered matcha; output declining amid the matcha boom.
Sentō (銭湯)
Sentō (銭湯) are Japanese pay-per-use public bathhouses, legally general public baths under the 1948 Public Bathhouses Act with prefecture-capped fees. Originating in temple baths and Edo-era commerce, they peaked at 18,325 in 1968 and fell to about 1,562 by 2025.
Serbian cuisine
Serbian cuisine (Srpska kuhinja, Српска кухиња), the national cuisine of Serbia: meat-centred Balkan cooking with Turkish, Austro-Hungarian and Mediterranean influences, known for ćevapi, sarma, kajmak, ajvar, rakija and kafana culture.
Serizawa Keisuke
Serizawa Keisuke (芹沢銈介) was a Japanese textile artist who invented the kata-ezome stencil-dyeing technique, was named a Living National Treasure in 1956, and joined the Mingei folk craft movement.
Service à la française
Service à la française: formal European table service, codified in 17th-18th century France, in which all dishes of each service were placed on the table at once; replaced by service à la russe in the 19th century.
Service à la russe
Service à la russe, or Russian service, is sequential course-by-course dining introduced to France by Prince Alexander Kurakin around 1810, replacing service à la française's simultaneous platters; also called guéridon service, it underlies modern plated meals.
Serving cunt
Serving cunt (serve cunt) is drag and ballroom slang meaning to act in a powerfully, unapologetically feminine manner; a strong compliment, popularized by RuPaul's Drag Race, memeified in 2021 and mainstream in 2023.
Sestertius
The sestertius (plural sestertii) was a Roman coin that began as a small silver piece and became, under Augustus, the standard unit for reckoning Roman money.
Seto ware
Seto ware (瀬戸焼) is the collective name for pottery and porcelain made in and around Seto City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, one of the Six Ancient Kilns with roughly a thousand years of production.
Seven Sisters songline
The Seven Sisters songline, known as Minyipuru (Martu) and Kungkarangkalpa (Aṉangu), is an Aboriginal Australian Ancestral narrative spanning thousands of kilometers of desert, ending with seven sisters rising as the Pleiades.
Sewing
Sewing: the craft of joining fabric with needle and thread, by hand or machine. Covers stitches, lockstitch machines, tools, history from 45,000-year-old eyed needles to Howe and Singer, and prices.
Sewing guilds
Sewing guilds are formal organizations of needleworkers regulating training, quality standards, pricing, and membership, with medieval origins and modern descendants like the American Sewing Guild, founded in 1978.
Sewing machine
Sewing machine: a machine that stitches fabric with thread using a needle and lockstitch mechanism. Also known as the lockstitch sewing machine; patented by Elias Howe in 1846, commercialized by Singer from 1851, and governed by household safety standards such as IEC 60335-2-28.
Sewing machine needle
Sewing machine needle: the steel needle carrying upper thread through fabric to form machine stitches. Key parts are shank, groove, eye, and scarf; household standard is system 130/705 H, sized in Nm blade diameter.
Sewing needle
Sewing needle: hand or machine implement with a shaft, point, and eye for thread. Bone eyed needles date to the late Pleistocene; modern needles use the 130/705 H system, sized by blade diameter.
Sewing terminology
Sewing terminology: the vocabulary of stitches, seams, fabric grain, pattern instructions, and finishes in sewing and quilting, codified by ASTM D5646/D4965, Bureau of Standards circular 283, and pattern-company glossaries.
Sex swing
Sex swing: a harness or sling suspending a person from above for sexual activity, a form of sex furniture. Types include conventional, sling, door, stand, and ceiling-mounted; safety depends on anchor strength and verified weight ratings.
Sfenj
Sfenj (سفنج, safanj, "sponge") is the Moroccan yeasted doughnut: a wet, unsweetened flour-water-yeast-salt dough hand-shaped into a ring and deep-fried, eaten hot at breakfast, during Ramadan, and as the Hanukkah food of Moroccan Jews.
Sgian dubh
Sgian dubh (sgian-dhubh), Scottish Gaelic for "black knife": a small single-edged Highland dress knife worn sheathed in the kilt hose. Derived from the concealed sgian achlais, now ceremonial, exempt under UK national costume rules, and endangered as a craft.
Shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ)
Shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ), a Japanese nabemono hot pot of ~3 mm-sliced beef swished in kombu broth, named for the swishing sound, debuted at Osaka's Suehiro in 1952 and differs from Chinese hot pot and sukiyaki.
Shady Maple Smorgasbord
Shady Maple Smorgasbord is an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant in East Earl, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, serving Pennsylvania Dutch cooking on a 200-foot buffet line for up to 7,000 diners a day.
Shaka sign
The shaka sign, also called hang loose, is Hawaii's thumb-and-pinky gesture of greeting, thanks, and aloha. Attributed to Hamana Kalili, it became Hawaii's official state gesture in 2024, the first in the U.S.
Shake Shack
Shake Shack (NYSE: SHAK) is an American fast-casual burger chain founded by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, starting as a 2001 Madison Square Park hot dog cart, permanent kiosk in 2004, IPO in 2015, 659 Shacks system-wide at the end of 2025.
Shaker furniture
Shaker furniture is the plain, rectilinear, highly functional furniture made and used by the Shakers, a communal American Protestant sect, from the late eighteenth century onward.
Shakey's Pizza
Shakey's Pizza, American pizza chain founded 1954 in Sacramento by Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson and Ed Plummer; known for thin crust pizza, Mojo potatoes, and Bunch of Lunch buffet; now centered on its Philippine operator SPAVI with 2,970 stores.