16-letter words containing a, c, t, i, s
- undiscriminatory — characterized by or showing prejudicial treatment, especially as an indication of bias related to age, color, national origin, religion, sex, etc.: discriminatory practices in housing; a discriminatory tax.
- unissued capital — authorized capital that has not yet been issued as shares
- unsystematically — having, showing, or involving a system, method, or plan: a systematic course of reading; systematic efforts.
- upsilon particle — the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet (Υ, υ).
- vapor combustion — Vapor combustion is a closed burn system used for treating liquid waste which contains volatile organic compounds.
- vasoconstriction — constriction of the blood vessels, as by the action of a nerve.
- vasoconstrictive — causing vasoconstriction.
- vegetable slicer — a device with a sharp blade for slicing vegetables finely;
- velcro fastening — a fastening made of Velcro
- vertical tasting — a tasting of different vintages of one particular wine.
- viceregal assent — the formal signing of an act of parliament by a governor general, by which it becomes law
- victorian values — qualities considered to characterize the Victorian period, including enterprise and initiative and the importance of the family
- vincent's angina — a disease characterized by ulceration of the mucosa of the tonsils, pharynx, and mouth, by the presence of abundant bacilli and spirochetes, and by the development of a membrane.
- visiting teacher — a teacher in a public school system, assigned to give home instruction to sick or disabled pupils.
- 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.
- vital statistics — The vital statistics of a population are statistics such as the number of births, deaths, or marriages which take place in it.
- vitruvian scroll — a scroll forming a stylized wave pattern.
- walking distance — distance that can easily be walked
- ward christensen — (person) The inventor of XMODEM and of the BBS. Ward did physics in college and programmed mainframes for IBM. Ward and friend Randy Suess set up their BBS on first on 1978-02-16 in Chicago. It ran on an S-100 computer with 64k RAM and two single-sided 8" 250kB diskettes.
- washington, d. c — Booker T(aliaferro) [boo k-er tol-uh-ver] /ˈbʊk ər ˈtɒl ə vər/ (Show IPA), 1856–1915, U.S. reformer, educator, author, and lecturer.
- washington, d.c. — Booker T(aliaferro) [boo k-er tol-uh-ver] /ˈbʊk ər ˈtɒl ə vər/ (Show IPA), 1856–1915, U.S. reformer, educator, author, and lecturer.
- watch this space — Journalists write 'Watch this space' in order to indicate in an informal way that they will be giving more information about something in the future.
- west valley city — city in NC Utah, near Salt Lake City: pop. 109,000
- western sandwich — a sandwich with a western omelet for a filling.
- whatchamacallits — Plural form of whatchamacallit.
- witches' sabbath — Sabbat.
- with clean hands — innocently
- word association — stimulation of an associative pattern by a word.
- yah-boo politics — adversarial politics in which politicians constantly deride their opponents and dismiss everything suggested by them
- ziegler catalyst — any of a group of catalysts, such as titanium trichloride (TiCl3) and aluminium alkyl (Al(CH3)3), that produce stereospecific polymers