21-letter words containing a, t, o, r, n
- throw someone a curve — a continuously bending line, without angles.
- ticker-tape reception — (mainly in New York) the showering of the motorcade of a distinguished politician, visiting head of state, etc, with ticker tape as a sign of welcome
- tide-generating force — the difference between the force of gravity exerted by the moon or the sun on a particle of water in the ocean and that exerted on an equal mass of matter at the centre of the earth. The lunar tide-generating forces are about 2.2 times greater than are the solar ones
- to be arrayed against — to be opposed to
- to be hard luck on sb — to be unfortunate or unlucky for someone
- to be in dire straits — to be in a position of acute difficulty
- to bend someone's ear — If you say that someone is bending your ear about something, you mean that they keep talking to you about it because they think it is important; used especially when you are irritated by this.
- to box someone's ears — If someone boxes a child's ears, they hit them on the side of their head as a punishment.
- to fall into the trap — If someone falls into the trap of doing something, they think or behave in a way which is not wise or sensible.
- to feather one's nest — If you say that someone is feathering their nest, you mean that they are getting a lot of money out of something, so that they can lead a comfortable life.
- to get into high gear — if people or an activity go into high gear, moves into high gear, etc, people do what they were doing more intensely, or the activity becomes more intense
- to have green fingers — If someone has green fingers, they are very good at gardening and their plants grow well.
- to have money to burn — If you say that someone has money to burn, you mean that they have more money than they need or that they spend their money on things that you think are unnecessary.
- to kill a mockingbird — a novel (1960) by Harper Lee.
- to lay down your life — If someone lays down their life for another person, they die so that the other person can live.
- to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
- to let your hair down — If you let your hair down, you relax completely and enjoy yourself.
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- to sink without trace — If you say that someone or something sinks without trace or sinks without a trace, you mean that they stop existing or stop being successful very suddenly and completely.
- to take your mind off — If something takes your mind off a problem or unpleasant situation, it helps you to forget about it for a while.
- topgallant forecastle — a partial weather deck on top of a forecastle superstructure; forecastle deck.
- topological invariant — a property of a topological space that is a property of every space related to the given space by a homeomorphism.
- toussaint l'ouverture — François Dominique [frahn-swa dawmee-neek] /frɑ̃ˈswa dɔmiˈnik/ (Show IPA), 1743–1803, Haitian patriot and leader of the Haitian Revolution slave rebellion.
- trades union congress — The Trades Union Congress in Britain is the same as the TUC.
- traffic control tower — an elevated structure for the visual observation and control of the air and ground traffic at an airport
- transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
- transport segregation — Transport segregation is when particles from a mixture separate because the mixture vibrates while it is being moved.
- traveling salesperson — a representative of a business firm who travels in an assigned territory soliciting orders for a company's services.
- triangulation station — a point used in triangulation as a basis for making maps. Triangulation stations are marked in a number of ways, such as by a tapering stone pillar on a hilltop
- trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
- tumor necrosis factor — a protein, produced in humans and other animals, that is destructive to cells showing abnormally rapid growth: identical with cachectin. Abbreviation: TNF.
- turn up one's nose at — to sneer at; scorn
- ulster unionist party — a Northern Irish political party advocating the maintenance of union with the UK
- ultraviolet astronomy — the branch of astronomy that deals with celestial objects emitting electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet range.
- under one's own steam — If you do something under your own steam, you do it without any help from anyone else.
- uniform business rate — a local tax in the UK paid by businesses, based on a local valuation of their premises and a rate fixed by central government that applies throughout the country
- union of south africa — former name for South Africa, Republic of.
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- university of arizona — (body, education) The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. Today, the University is one of the top 20 research universities in the nation, with a student enrollment of more than 35,000, a faculty and staff of 12,500, and a 345-acre campus. Address: Tucson, Arizona, USA.
- university of iceland — (body, education) The Home of Fjolnir.
- venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
- vladivostok agreement — a preliminary arms control accord concluded by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Gerald Ford in Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., in December 1974.
- voice-stress analyzer — a machine purported to detect stress in a human voice and to ascertain a person's truthfulness.
- voluntary arrangement — a procedure enabling an insolvent company to come to an arrangement with its creditors and resolve its financial problems, often in compliance with a court order
- voluntary association — a group of individuals joined together on the basis of mutual interest or common objectives, especially a business group that is not organized or constituted as a legal entity.
- voluntary liquidation — the process of voluntarily terminating the affairs of a business, firm, etc, by realizing its assets to discharge its liabilities or the state of a business firm, etc, having its affairs so terminated
- volunteers of america — a religious reform and relief organization, similar to the Salvation Army, founded in New York City in 1896 by Ballington Booth, son of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Abbreviation: VOA.
- warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
- washington's birthday — February 22, formerly observed as a legal holiday in most states of the U.S. in honor of the birth of George Washington.
- water of constitution — water present in a molecule that cannot be removed without disrupting the molecule.