16-letter words containing a, c, e, r, v, u
- river carpsucker — a carpsucker, Carpiodes carpio, found in silty rivers of the central U.S. south to Mexico.
- sevruga (caviar) — caviar prepared from the small, grayish or black roe of a sturgeon chiefly from the Caspian Sea
- superserviceable — overly disposed to be of service; officious.
- surveyor's chain — a series of objects connected one after the other, usually in the form of a series of metal rings passing through one another, used either for various purposes requiring a flexible tie with high tensile strength, as for hauling, supporting, or confining, or in various ornamental and decorative forms.
- travel insurance — insurance which covers losses that may be incurred while travelling, such as medical expenses, flight cancellations, lost luggage, etc
- unattractiveness — the condition of not appealing to the senses or mind through beauty, form, character, etc
- unconversational — of, relating to, or characteristic of conversation: a conversational tone of voice.
- underpitch vault — a construction having a central vault intersected by vaults of lower pitch.
- vancouver island — an island of SW Canada, off the SW coast of British Columbia: separated from the Canadian mainland by the Strait of Georgia and Queen Charlotte Sound, and from the US mainland by Juan de Fuca Strait; the largest island off the W coast of North America. Chief town: Victoria. Pop: 706 243 (2001). Area: 32 137 sq km (12 408 sq miles)
- ventriculography — radiography of the ventricles of the heart after injection of a contrast medium
- verruca vulgaris — the common wart.
- vertebral column — spinal column.
- victorian values — qualities considered to characterize the Victorian period, including enterprise and initiative and the importance of the family
- virtual particle — an elementary particle of transitory existence that does not appear as a free particle in a particular situation but that can transmit a force from one particle to another.
- visual interface — (tool, text) (vi) /V-I/, /vi:/, *never* /siks/ A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for an early BSD release. vi became the de facto standard Unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favourite outside of MIT until the rise of Emacs after about 1984. It tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even some Emacs fans resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of Emacs). See holy wars.
- vocabulary entry — (in dictionaries) a word, phrase, abbreviation, symbol, affix, name, etc., listed with its definition or explanation in alphabetical order or listed for identification after the word from which it is derived or to which it is related.
- voluntary muscle — muscle whose action is normally controlled by an individual's will; mainly skeletal muscle, composed of parallel bundles of striated, multinucleate fibers.
- voluntary sector — the part of the economy that consists of non-profit-making organizations, as opposed to the public and private sectors
- vulcanized fiber — a leatherlike substance made by compression of layers of paper or cloth that have been treated with acids or zinc chloride, used chiefly for electric insulation.