14-letter words containing a, l
- attention line — a line of text after the address on a piece of correspondence, directing it to a particular person or department.
- attractability — The quality of being attractable.
- auditory canal — the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum.
- augean stables — the stables, not cleaned for 30 years, where King Augeas kept 3000 oxen. Hercules diverted the River Alpheus through them and cleaned them in a day
- 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.
- augmentatively — In an augmentative fashion.
- auld lang syne — Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish song about friendship that is traditionally sung as clocks strike midnight on New Year's Eve.
- aurothiomalate — (chemistry) A thiomalate with the addition of gold.
- aussie battler — an Australian working-class person
- austrian blind — a window blind consisting of rows of vertically gathered fabric that may be drawn up to form a series of ruches
- author catalog — a catalog whose entries are listed by author, editor, compiler, translator, or other party considered to have responsibility for the creation or assembly of the work specified.
- authority file — a file, either on cards or in machine-readable format, in which decisions involving bibliographic records, particularly for form of entry, are recorded to establish a precedent or rule for subsequent decisions and to provide for consistency of entries.
- autocollimator — an instrument combining the functions of a telescope and collimator, for detecting and measuring very small deviations in a beam of light.
- autocorrelator — (electronics) A device that modifies a signal with a delayed copy of itself in order to detect any periodic signal hidden in the noise.
- autocratically — In an autocratic manner.
- autoenrollment — Automatic enrollment (especially of security certificates in a computer system).
- autopilot code — (jargon, humour) Code that was written by a programmer on "auto-pilot" who wasn't really thinking about what they were doing.
- autopolyploidy — having more than two haploid sets of chromosomes that are derived from the same ancestral species.
- autoregulation — the continual automatic adjustment or self-regulation of a biochemical, physiological, or ecological system to maintain a stable state.
- autotetraploid — an individual or strain whose chromosome complement consists of four copies of a single genome due to doubling of an ancestral chromosome complement
- 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.
- auxiliary verb — a verb used to indicate the tense, voice, mood, etc, of another verb where this is not indicated by inflection, such as English will in he will go, was in he was eating and he was eaten, do in I do like you, etc
- availabilities — suitable or ready for use; of use or service; at hand: I used whatever tools were available.
- avalanche lily — a wildflower (Erythronium montanum) of the lily family, native to the mountain meadows of Washington and Oregon and blooming in June among the melting snowbanks
- avalanche wind — the wind that is created in front of an avalanche.
- avalokitesvara — a male Bodhisattva, widely revered and identified with various persons and gods.
- ave atque vale — hail and farewell: from an ode of Catullus in commemoration of his dead brother
- average clause — a clause in an insurance policy that distributes the insurance among several items, usually in proportion to their value
- avogadro's law — the principle that equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of molecules at the same temperature and pressure
- 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
- axis of diesel — a name given to a bloc of countries (Russia, Iran, and Venezuela) whose reserves of oil enhance their political importance
- azimuth circle — a device for measuring azimuths, consisting of a graduated ring equipped with a sighting vane on each side, which fits concentrically over a compass.
- 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.
- baby blue-eyes — a native Calif. wildflower (Nemophila menziesii) of the waterleaf family with bell-shaped flowers
- baby-blue-eyes — any of several plants of the genus Nemophila, of western North America, especially N. menziesii, a low-growing plant having blue, white-centered flowers.
- baccalaureates — Plural form of baccalaureate.
- bachelor chest — a chest of drawers, esp., one for men's shirts, sweaters, underwear, etc.
- bachelor party — A bachelor party is a party for a man who is getting married very soon, to which only men are invited.
- back catalogue — A musical performer's back catalogue is the music which they recorded and released in the past rather than their latest recordings.
- back clearance — runout (def 1b).
- back-clearance — Machinery. the gradual termination of a groove on the body of an object not ending there, as the upper termination of a flute in a twist drill. Also called back clearance. a space in a depressed area of an object into which a machine tool or grinding wheel may safely enter at the end of a pass or operation.
- back-pedalling — a retreat from or a retraction of a previously held view
- 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.
- backbreakingly — In a backbreaking manner.
- backflap hinge — Building Trades. flap (def 20a).
- backflow valve — a valve for preventing flowing liquid, as sewage, from reversing its direction.