17-letter words containing a, t
- at someone's feet — as someone's disciple
- at someone's hand — from
- at swords' points — ready to quarrel or fight
- at the expense of — If you achieve something at the expense of someone, you do it in a way which might cause them some harm or disadvantage.
- at the request of — in accordance with the specific demand or wish of (someone)
- at the service of — To be at the service of a person or organization means to be available to help or be used by that person or organization.
- at their own game — If you beat someone at their own game, you use the same methods that they have used, but more successfully, so that you gain an advantage over them.
- athlete's village — an area of accommodation for competitors taking part in a sports event
- attachment theory — a set of concepts that explain the emergence of an emotional bond between an infant and primary caregiver and the way in which this bond affects the child’s behavioral and emotional development into adulthood. See also attachment (def 3a).
- attainment target — a general defined level of ability that a pupil is expected to achieve in every subject at each key stage in the National Curriculum
- attendance centre — (in Britain) a place at which young offenders are required to attend regularly instead of going to prison
- attendance record — the record of how often a person has attended an institution such as a school
- attention-getting — conspicuously drawing attention to something or someone: an attention-getting device; attention-getting behavior.
- attention-seeking — intended to make people take notice
- attorneys-in-fact — a person authorized by power of attorney to act on the authorizer's behalf outside a court of law.
- attraction sphere — centrosphere (sense 1)
- audio description — a facility provided for visually impaired people in which a film, television programme, or play is described through audio technology
- augmented reality — an artificial environment created through the combination of real-world and computer-generated data
- aurea mediocritas — the golden mean.
- australia antigen — an antigen present in the blood of some persons with one form of hepatitis
- australia current — a branch of the South Equatorial Current flowing SW from around Fiji to the E coast of Australia and then S along the coast.
- australian ballot — an official ballot listing candidates for election to public office and issues, levies, etc., distributed inside the polling place to be marked by the voter in secret: it originated in Australia and is widely used in the U.S.
- australian kelpie — one of an Australian breed of medium-sized sheepherding dogs having a short, harsh, straight coat in a combination of colors that can include black, red, tan, fawn, chocolate, or smoke blue, probably developed by crossbreeding between the border collie and dingo.
- australian salute — a movement of the hand and arm made to brush flies away from one's face
- australopithecine — any of various extinct apelike primates of the genus Australopithecus and related genera, remains of which have been discovered in southern and E Africa. Some species are estimated to be over 4.5 million years old
- authoritativeness — having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority: an authoritative opinion.
- authority control — the establishment and maintainance of consistent forms of terms, as of names, subjects, and titles, to be used as headings in bibliographic records.
- autocatalytically — In an autocatalytic manner.
- autocorrelational — Of or pertaining to autocorrelation.
- automated testing — (testing) Software testing assisted with software tools that require no operator input, analysis, or evaluation.
- automatic vending — selling goods by vending machines
- automatic writing — writing performed without apparent intent or conscious control, especially to achieve spontaneity or uncensored expression.
- autonomous syntax — an approach of generative grammar in which the syntactic component of a grammar is viewed as existing or operating independently of the semantic component and abstract syntactic representation is not equivalent to semantic representation.
- autonomous system — (networking, routing) (AS) A collection of routers under a single administrative authority, using a common Interior Gateway Protocol for routing packets.
- autosensitization — autoimmunization.
- auxiliary storage — secondary storage.
- average deviation — a measure of dispersion, computed by taking the arithmetic mean of the absolute values of the deviations of the functional values from some central value, usually the mean or median.
- average seek time — (storage) The mean time it takes to move the head of a disk drive from one track to another, averaged over the source and destination cylinders. Usually measured in milliseconds (ms). The average seek time gives a good measure of the speed of the drive in a multi-user environment where successive read/write request are largely uncorrelated. Ten ms is common for a hard disk and 200 ms for an eight-speed CD-ROM.
- aviation industry — a collective term for the companies involved in air transport
- aviation medicine — the branch of medicine concerned with the effects on man of flight in the earth's atmosphere
- avogadro constant — the number of atoms or molecules in a mole of a substance
- axis of ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- axis-of-ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- babe in the woods — a baby or child.
- baby doll nightie — a short, frilly nightdress
- bachelor's button — any of several plants of a genus (Centaurea) of the composite family, that have scaly, vase-shaped bracts below the white, pink, or blue flowers; esp., the cornflower and knapweed
- bachelor's-button — any of various plants with round flower heads, especially the cornflower.
- back on the rails — If something is back on the rails, it is beginning to be successful again after a period when it almost failed.
- background report — a report on someone or something that sheds light on their background, esp a report on the background of a person convicted of a crime before they are sentenced by a judge
- bacteriologically — In a bacteriological manner; with respect to bacteriology.