12-letter words containing a, w, y
- towaway zone — See example at towaway.
- travel-weary — tired or exhausted as a result of travelling
- trial lawyer — a lawyer who specializes in appearing before trial courts.
- tube railway — subway (def 1).
- unrewardedly — in an unrewarding manner
- unroadworthy — not mechanically sound or suitable for use on the road
- unwatchfully — in an unwatchful manner
- unwaveringly — to sway to and fro; flutter: Foliage wavers in the breeze.
- unwearyingly — in an unwearying manner
- utility wear — casual clothing that was originally intended for a particular activity, such as snowboarding or skiing
- variety show — vaudeville performance
- wackyparsing — (Internet, slang) present participle of wackyparse.
- wages policy — a government policy setting wages and wage increases for workers, for example, setting minimum wage requirements
- waitangi day — the national day of New Zealand (Feb 6), commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) by Māori chiefs and a representative of the British Government. The treaty provided the basis for the British annexation of New Zealand
- walter mitty — an ordinary, timid person who is given to adventurous and self-aggrandizing daydreams or secret plans as a way of glamorizing a humdrum life.
- washer-dryer — a washing machine and a clothes dryer combined in one unit.
- watchability — detectable; apparent.
- water supply — the supply of purified water available to a community.
- water system — a river and all its branches.
- water turkey — anhinga.
- wave cyclone — a cyclone that forms on a front and, in maturing, produces an increasingly sharp, wavelike deformation of the front.
- wave-and-pay — relating to a payment system that uses RFID technology to allow a customer to pay for goods by passing a card in front of a sensor
- webliography — a list of electronic documents, websites, or other resources available on the World Wide Web, especially those relating to a particular subject: a student's annotated webliography on Shakespeare.
- wesley clark — (person) One of the designers of the Laboratory Instrument Computer at MIT who subsequently had a quiet hand in many seminal computing events, such as the development of the Internet, the first really good description of the metastability problem in computer logic.
- west babylon — a city on S Long Island, in SE New York.
- west germany — a former republic in central Europe: created in 1949 by the coalescing of the British, French, and U.S. zones of occupied Germany established in 1945. 96,025 sq. mi. (248,706 sq. km). Capital: Bonn.
- whataboutery — (of two communities in conflict) the practice of repeatedly blaming the other side and referring to events from the past
- whimsicality — Also, whimsicalness. whimsical quality or character.
- whiskey jack — gray jay.
- whittle away — To whittle away something or whittle away at it means to gradually make it smaller, weaker, or less effective.
- wild parsley — any of several uncultivated plants resembling the parsley in shape and structure.
- willmar city — a city in SW Minnesota.
- winter-hardy — able to survive the effects of cold weather.
- with a … eye — in a … manner
- woburn abbey — a mansion in Woburn in Bedfordshire: originally an abbey; rebuilt in the 17th century for the Dukes of Bedford, altered by Henry Holland in the 18th century; deer park landscaped by Humphrey Repton
- woolly aphid — any plant louse of the family Aphididae, characterized by a waxy secretion that appears like a jumbled mass of fine, curly, white cottony or woolly threads, as Eriosoma lanigerum (woolly apple aphid or American blight) and Prociphilus tessellatus (woolly alder aphid)
- władysław ii — original name Jogaila. ?1351–1434, grand duke of Lithuania (1377–1401) and king of Poland (1386–1434). He united Lithuania and Poland and founded the Jagiellon dynasty
- władysław iv — 1595–1648, king of Poland (1632–48)
- yarrow-river — a river in SE Scotland, flowing into the Tweed. 14 miles (23 km) long.
- yellow alert — (in military or civilian defense) the first alert given when enemy aircraft are discovered approaching a military installation, city, coastline, etc. Compare blue alert, red alert, white alert.
- yellow avens — herb bennet.
- yellow daisy — the black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta.
- yellow metal — a type of brass having about 60 per cent copper and 40 per cent zinc
- yellow pages — Network Information Service
- yellow sally — an angler's name for either of two small yellow stoneflies: Isoperla grammatica of chalk streams and Chloroperla torrentium of upland streams
- yellowhammer — a common European bunting, Emberiza citrinella, the male of which is marked with bright yellow.
- yellowjacket — (chiefly, US) A predatory wasp with alternating black and yellow stripes around the abdomen, usually of the genera Vespula or Dolichovespula.
- yellowshanks — A bird, the yellowlegs.
- yellowthroat — any of several American warblers of the genus Geothlypis, having a throat that is yellow, especially the common yellowthroat, G. trichas.
- yukawa meson — a hypothetical elementary particle with finite rest mass, whose exchange between nucleons would account for the strong short-range forces between nucleons: subsequently identified as the pion.