16-letter words containing a, l, i, n, c, u
- 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
- victorian values — qualities considered to characterize the Victorian period, including enterprise and initiative and the importance of the family
- 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.
- vitruvian scroll — a scroll forming a stylized wave pattern.
- 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.
- wheel animalcule — a rotifer.
- wheelchair-bound — unable to walk through injury, illness, etc and relying on a wheelchair to move around
- woodland caribou — a variety of caribou inhabiting the bogs and forests of eastern Canada, having large, palmate antlers.