16-letter words containing a, t, o, p
- antipornographic — Opposing pornography.
- antoinette perry — Antoinette, 1888–1946, U.S. actress, theatrical manager, and producer.
- apostolic church — the Christian church as founded by the apostles.
- apparent horizon — the apparent line that divides the earth and the sky
- apple tree borer — Also called flatheaded apple tree borer. the larva of a metallic wood-boring beetle, Chrysobothris femorata, that bores into the wood of apple and other fruit trees.
- apple-touch-icon — (programming) (apple-touch-icon.png) Apple's default icon (image) used to represent a website, e.g. when saved as a bookmark or on the home screen of an iOS device such as an iPhone or iPad. Apple's scheme allows a site to offer images of different sizes so the client can choose the most appropriate one according to its screen size and resolution. Apple devices and applications completely ignore the favicon.ico de facto standard which, while somewhat quirky in its use of the ico format, has been pretty much universally adopted elsewhere. Conversely, apple-touch-icon.png will be ignored by non-Apple devices, possibly because its 16x16 resolution would look pretty shabby on most smart phones.
- application form — a form to be filled in when applying for job, grant etc
- appraisal method — a method used for the appraisal of an employee
- aromatherapeutic — Of or pertaining to aromatherapy.
- arrival platform — the platform where a train, or passenger arrives
- arteriocapillary — Relating to the arteries and the capillaries.
- arthroscopically — By means of arthroscopy.
- ascidian tadpole — the free-swimming larva of an ascidian, having a tadpole-like tail containing the notochord and nerve cord
- aston dark space — the dark region between the cathode and the cathode glow in a vacuum tube, occurring when the pressure is low.
- astrophotography — the photography of celestial bodies used in astronomy
- asymptomatically — showing no evidence of disease.
- at bayonet point — done while having a bayonet pointed at one
- atmospheric tide — a movement of atmospheric masses caused by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon and by daily solar heating.
- atomic physicist — a scientist specializing in atomic physics
- attitude problem — a frame of mind perceived by others to be hostile or uncooperative
- auction pinochle — a variety of pinochle for three to five players in which, for every hand, there are three active players, each dealt 15 cards, with the highest bidder winning the contract and playing against the other two active opponents.
- auditory aphasia — aphasia in which there is no comprehension of spoken words; word deafness.
- australopithecus — an extinct genus of small-brained,large-toothed bipedal hominids that lived in Africa between one and four million years ago.
- autobiographical — An autobiographical piece of writing relates to events in the life of the person who has written it.
- autobogotiphobia — bogotify
- autoethnographic — Using ethnographic techniques to describe one's own life, or events in which one is a participant.
- automanipulation — physical stimulation of one's own genitals.
- automatic pistol — a type of pistol having a mechanism that throws out the empty shell, puts in a new one, and prepares the pistol to be fired again.
- automatic repeat — a key on the keyboard of a typewriter, computer, etc, which, when depressed continuously, produces the character repeatedly until the key is released
- autoradiographic — Of or pertaining to an autoradiograph, a radiographic image produced by the decay of a radioactive substance.
- autostereoscopic — Of or pertaining to autostereoscopy.
- 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
- back-propagation — (Or "backpropagation") A learning algorithm for modifying a feed-forward neural network which minimises a continuous "error function" or "objective function." Back-propagation is a "gradient descent" method of training in that it uses gradient information to modify the network weights to decrease the value of the error function on subsequent tests of the inputs. Other gradient-based methods from numerical analysis can be used to train networks more efficiently. Back-propagation makes use of a mathematical trick when the network is simulated on a digital computer, yielding in just two traversals of the network (once forward, and once back) both the difference between the desired and actual output, and the derivatives of this difference with respect to the connection weights.
- bacterioplankton — (biology) The bacterial component of marine plankton.
- bankruptcy court — a section of the United States federal court which specializes in the handling of bankruptcy cases
- bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
- barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
- basement complex — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
- 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
- batch production — production of goods in batches, rather than continuously
- bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
- battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- beautiful people — wealthy, fashionable people of the leisure class
- behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
- bicapitalisation — The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalisation. Too many marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare studlycaps.
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.