16-letter words containing a, r, o, n, s
- anti-rationalist — the principle or habit of accepting reason as the supreme authority in matters of opinion, belief, or conduct.
- anti-romanticism — romantic spirit or tendency.
- anti-segregation — the act or practice of segregating; a setting apart or separation of people or things from others or from the main body or group: gender segregation in some fundamentalist religions.
- anticholinergics — Plural form of anticholinergic.
- antihypertension — Pathology. elevation of the blood pressure, especially the diastolic pressure. an arterial disease characterized by this condition.
- antiparkinsonian — An antiparkinsonian is an agent used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.
- antirecessionary — used to counteract or offest the economic effects of a recession: the president's antirecessionary program.
- anxiety disorder — any of various mental disorders characterized by extreme anxiety and including panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder
- anxiety neurosis — a relatively mild form of mental illness characterized by extreme distress and agitation, often occurring without any obvious cause
- approachableness — capable of being approached; accessible.
- aratus of sicyon — 271–213 b.c, Greek general: leader of the Achaean League.
- archaeoastronomy — the scientific study of the beliefs and practices concerning astronomy that existed in ancient and prehistoric civilizations
- archaeomagnetism — an archaeological technique for dating certain clay objects by measuring the extent to which they have been magnetized by the earth's magnetic field
- archconservative — consistently holding extremely conservative views: publisher of the city's archconservative newspaper.
- arsenic trioxide — a white poisonous powder used in the manufacture of glass and as an insecticide, rat poison, and weedkiller. Formula: As2O3
- arthus' reaction — a severe, local immune reaction to the injection of an antigen in a sensitized host.
- as distinct from — If you say that you are talking about one thing as distinct from another, you are indicating exactly which thing you mean.
- as far as i know — You can use far in expressions like 'as far as I know' and 'so far as I remember' to indicate that you are not absolutely sure of the statement you are about to make or have just made, and you may be wrong.
- assembly routine — assembler (def 2a).
- assistant editor — a person who assists an editor in their work
- association area — any of the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain connected by numerous nerve fibers to all parts of both cerebral hemispheres and coordinating such higher activities as learning and reasoning.
- aston dark space — the dark region between the cathode and the cathode glow in a vacuum tube, occurring when the pressure is low.
- astroengineering — (scifi) The construction of megastructures in space by technologically advanced beings.
- astronomer royal — an honorary title awarded to an eminent British astronomer: until 1972, the Astronomer Royal was also director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory
- at one's leisure — when one has free time
- austro-hungarian — of or relating to the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)
- authoritarianism — Authoritarianism is the state of being authoritarian or the belief that people with power, especially the State, have the right to control other people's actions.
- autofluorescence — (biology, microscopy) Self-induced fluorescence.
- autotransformers — Plural form of autotransformer.
- autotransfusions — Plural form of autotransfusion.
- aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
- azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
- background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
- background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
- backus-naur form — (language, grammar) (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of Donald Knuth. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a metasyntax?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see RFC 2234). Consider this BNF for a US postal address:
::= ::= | "." ::= [ ] | ::= [ ] ::= "," This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the regexp wild cards such as "*" or "+". EBNF is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the ALGOL 60 report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognised. ABNF is another extension. - bargaining scope — the range of topics within the scope of a particular set of negotiations leading to a collective agreement
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
- bastard mahogany — an Australian tree, Eucalyptus botryoides, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and furrowed bark.
- bastard pointing — an imitation of tuck pointing, having a fillet made from the mortar of the joint.
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- bear one's cross — a structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, used to execute persons in ancient times.
- behavioural sink — a small area in which people or animals live in overcrowded conditions
- bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
- bihar and orissa — a former province of NE India: now divided into the states of Bihar and Odisha (formerly Orissa).
- binocular fusion — fusion (def 5a).
- binocular-fusion — the act or process of fusing; the state of being fused.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.