16-letter words containing a, t, y, c
- sedimentary rock — rock formed from compacted minerals
- self-deprecatory — belittling or undervaluing oneself; excessively modest.
- self-exculpatory — intended to excuse oneself from blame or guilt
- silky flycatcher — any of several passerine birds of the family Ptilogonatidae, of the southwestern U.S. to Panama, related to the waxwings.
- situation comedy — a comedy drama, especially a television series made up of discrete episodes about the same group of characters, as members of a family.
- slang dictionary — a specialized dictionary covering the words, phrases, and idioms that reflect the least formal speech of a language. These terms are often metaphorical and playful, and are likely to be evanescent as the spoken language changes from one generation to another. Much slang belongs to specific groups, as the jargon of a particular class, profession, or age group. Some is vulgar. Some slang terms have staying power as slang, but others make a transition into common informal speech, and then into the standard language. An online slang dictionary, such as the Dictionary.com Slang Dictionary, provides immediate information about the meaning and history of a queried term and its appropriateness or lack of appropriateness in a range of social and professional circumstances.
- smack in the eye — a snub or setback
- social pathology — a social factor, as poverty, old age, or crime, that tends to increase social disorganization and inhibit personal adjustment.
- social secretary — a personal secretary employed to make social appointments and handle personal correspondence.
- sodium cyclamate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, NaC 6 NH 1 2 SO 3 , that has been used as a sweetening agent: banned by the FDA in 1970.
- specific gravity — the ratio of the density of any substance to the density of some other substance taken as standard, water being the standard for liquids and solids, and hydrogen or air being the standard for gases.
- speech pathology — the scientific study and treatment of defects, disorders, and malfunctions of speech and voice, as stuttering, lisping, or lalling, and of language disturbances, as aphasia or delayed language acquisition.
- standing cypress — a plant, Ipomopsis rubra, of the southern U.S., having feathery leaves and clusters of red and yellow flowers.
- start-up company — new business
- statutory change — a change in the law
- stonecrop family — the plant family Crassulaceae, characterized by succulent herbaceous plants and shrubs with simple, fleshy leaves, clusters of small flowers, and dry, dehiscent fruit, and including hen-and-chickens, houseleek, kalanchoe, live-forever, orpine, sedum, and stonecrop.
- storage capacity — amount of room or space
- strict liability — responsibility for damage or loss regardless of intention or culpability
- styralyl acetate — methylphenylcarbinyl acetate.
- symmetric matrix — a matrix with the lower-left half equal to the mirror image of the upper-right half; a matrix that is its own transpose.
- syncategorematic — Traditional Logic. of or relating to a word that is part of a categorical proposition but is not a term, as all, some, is.
- system on a chip — A system on a chip combines most of a system's elements on a single integrated circuit or chip.
- systematic error — a persistent error that cannot be attributed to chance.
- systemic grammar — a grammar in which description is founded on the relationships among the various units at different ranks of a language, and in which language is viewed as a system of meaning-creating choices
- t-carrier system — (communications) A series of wideband digital data transmission formats originally developed by the Bell System and used in North America and Japan. The basic unit of the T-carrier system is the DS0, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one voice circuit. Originally the 1.544 megabit per second T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kilobit per second streams, leaving 8 kilobits per second of framing information which facilitates the synchronisation and demultiplexing at the receiver. T2 and T3 circuits channels carry multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 44.736 Mbps. The T-carrier system uses in-band signaling, resulting in lower transmission rates than the E-carrier system. It uses a restored polar signal with 303-type data stations. Asynchronous signals can be transmitted via a standard which encodes each change of level into three bits; two which indicate the time (within the current synchronous frame) at which the transition occurred, and the third which indicates the direction of the transition. Although wasteful of line bandwidth, such use is usually only over small distances. T1 lines are made free of direct current signal components by in effect capacitor coupling the signal at the transmitter and restoring that lost component with a "slicer" at the receiver, leading to the description "restored polar".
- taft-hartley act — an act of the U.S. Congress (1947) that supersedes but continues most of the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act and that, in addition, provides for an eighty-day injunction against strikes that endanger public health and safety and bans closed shops, featherbedding, secondary boycotts, jurisdictional strikes, and certain other union practices.
- tertiary college — a college system incorporating the secondary school sixth form and vocational courses
- the caine mutiny — a novel by Herman Wouk, later made into a film
- the early church — the Christian church in the centuries immediately following Christ's death
- the eternal city — Rome
- the human comedy — French La Comédie Humaine. a collected edition of tales and novels in 17 volumes (1842–48) by Honoré de Balzac.
- the-card-players — a painting (1892) by Paul Cézanne.
- thermoplasticity — soft and pliable when heated, as some plastics, without any change of the inherent properties.
- thick-tailed ray — Ichthyology. any ray of the order Rajiformes, having a relatively thick, fleshy tail, including the guitarfishes and the skates.
- thrombocytopenia — an abnormal decrease in the number of blood platelets.
- to call it a day — If you call it a day, you decide to stop what you are doing because you are tired of it or because it is not successful.
- to carry the can — If you have to carry the can, you have to take all the blame for something.
- to carry the day — If someone carries the day, they are the winner in a contest such as a battle, debate, or sporting competition.
- to cut both ways — If you say that something cuts both ways, you mean that it can have two opposite effects, or can have both good and bad effects.
- tobacco industry — business of selling smoking products
- trans-fatty acid — a polyunsaturated fatty acid that has been converted from the cis-form by hydrogenation: used in the manufacture of margarine
- transcendentally — transcendent, surpassing, or superior.
- transcrystalline — situated within or passing through the crystals of a substance.
- transfer company — a company that transports people or luggage for a relatively short distance, as between terminals of two railroad lines.
- tray agriculture — hydroponics.
- tropical cyclone — a cyclone that originates over a tropical ocean area and can develop into the destructive storm known in the U.S. as a hurricane, in the western Pacific region as a typhoon, and elsewhere by other names. Compare extratropical cyclone, hurricane (def 1), willy-willy.
- trucking company — a company that transports goods by lorry
- typhoid bacillus — the bacterium Salmonella typhosa, causing typhoid fever.
- un-contradictory — asserting the contrary or opposite; contradicting; inconsistent; logically opposite: contradictory statements.
- unapologetically — containing an apology or excuse for a fault, failure, insult, injury, etc.: An apologetic letter to his creditors explained the delay.