14-letter words containing a, l, o, n
- appreciational — gratitude; thankful recognition: They showed their appreciation by giving him a gold watch.
- apsidal motion — the rotation of the major axis of an eccentric orbit in the plane of the orbit.
- arachnodactyly — A condition in which the fingers and hands are abnormally long and slender.
- arachnological — relating to arachnology
- archencephalon — the primitive forebrain region of the embryo, anterior to the notochord, that gives rise to the midbrain and forebrain.
- armour-plating — The armour-plating on a vehicle or building is the hard metal covering which is intended to protect it from gunfire and other missiles.
- art collection — a collection of art works
- ash can school — a group of US painters including Robert Henri and later George Bellows, founded in 1907, noted for their depiction of the sordid aspects of city life
- assault weapon — any of various automatic and semiautomatic military firearms utilizing an intermediate-power cartridge, designed for individual use. Compare assault rifle.
- assembly point — a designated place where people have been told to wait after evacuating a building in the event of a fire or other emergency
- assemblyperson — a member of a legislative assembly, especially a member of the lower house of the legislature in certain states of the U.S.
- assert oneself — to insist on one's rights, or on being recognized
- associableness — The state or quality of being associable.
- astronomically — of, relating to, or connected with astronomy.
- asynchronously — In an asynchronous manner.
- at a loose end — If you are at a loose end, you are bored because you do not have anything to do and cannot think of anything that you want to do. In American English, you usually say that you are at loose ends.
- at close range — If you see or hit something at close range or from close range, you are very close to it when you see it or hit it. If you do something at a range of half a mile, for example, you are half a mile away from it when you do it.
- at one's elbow — within easy reach
- at one's heels — just behind or following closely
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- atlantic ocean — the world's second largest ocean, bounded in the north by the Arctic, in the south by the Antarctic, in the west by North and South America, and in the east by Europe and Africa. Greatest depth: 9220 m (30 246 ft). Area: about 81 585 000 sq km (31 500 000 sq miles)
- attention line — a line of text after the address on a piece of correspondence, directing it to a particular person or department.
- auditory canal — the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum.
- auger-electron — a nonradiative process in which an atom in an excited state undergoes a transition to a lower state by the emission of a bound electron (Auger electron) rather than by the emission of an x-ray.
- autoenrollment — Automatic enrollment (especially of security certificates in a computer system).
- autoregulation — the continual automatic adjustment or self-regulation of a biochemical, physiological, or ecological system to maintain a stable state.
- autotransplant — autograft.
- auxiliary note — a nonharmonic note occurring between two harmonic notes
- auxiliary tone — a melodic ornamental tone following a principal tone by a step above or below and returning to the principal tone; embellishment.
- avoidance play — a play by the declarer designed to prevent a particular opponent from taking the lead.
- axial skeleton — the bones that together comprise the skull and the vertebral column
- babbling brook — a cook
- babbling error — (networking) An Ethernet node attempting to transmit more than 1518 data bytes - the largest allowed Ethernet packet. This is why the Maximum Transmission Unit for IP traffic on Ethernet is 1500.
- backbone cabal — (networking) A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the Great Renaming and reined in the chaos of Usenet during most of the 1980s. The cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal cat-fight.
- backing vocals — a vocal accompaniment for a pop singer
- ball indicator — a flight instrument that measures the angle of roll about an aircraft's horizontal axis, thereby indicating whether or not the aircraft is skidding or slipping.
- ballon d'essai — a project or policy put forward experimentally to gauge reactions to it
- balloon sleeve — a sleeve fitting tightly from wrist to elbow and becoming fully rounded from elbow to shoulder
- ballot rigging — Ballot rigging is the act of illegally changing the result of an election by producing a false record of the number of votes.
- ballroom dance — a social dance, popular since the beginning of the 20th century, in conventional rhythms, such as the foxtrot and the quickstep
- balsaminaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Balsaminaceae, a family of flowering plants, including balsam and touch-me-not, that have irregular flowers and explosive capsules
- balto-slavonic — a hypothetical subfamily of Indo-European languages consisting of Baltic and Slavonic. It is now generally believed that similarities between them result from geographical proximity rather than any special relationship
- banana problem — (programming, humour) From the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell "banana", but I don't know when to stop". Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare fencepost error). One may say "there is a banana problem" of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also creeping elegance, creeping featuritis).
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baranof island — an island off SE Alaska, in the western part of the Alexander Archipelago. Area: 4162 sq km (1607 sq miles)
- barnacle goose — a N European goose, Branta leucopsis, that has a black-and-white head and body and grey wings
- barong tagalog — (in the Philippines) a man's long-sleeved formal overblouse, made of fine, sheer fabric, often embroidered.
- basal ganglion — any of several masses of gray matter in each cerebral hemisphere.
- battle station — the place or position that one is assigned to for battle or in an emergency.
- bazillionaires — Plural form of bazillionaire.