16-letter words containing e, a, r, y
- astroarchaeology — archaeoastronomy.
- astrometeorology — the study of the theoretical effects of astronomical bodies and forces on the earth's atmosphere.
- astronomer royal — an honorary title awarded to an eminent British astronomer: until 1972, the Astronomer Royal was also director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory
- at liberty to do — If someone is at liberty to do something, they have been given permission to do it.
- attorney general — A country's Attorney General is its chief law officer, who advises its government or ruler.
- attorney-in-fact — a person authorized by power of attorney to act on the authorizer's behalf outside a court of law.
- auditory vesicle — the pouch that is formed by the invagination of an ectodermal placode and that develops into the internal ear.
- authority figure — a person whose real or apparent authority over others inspires or demands obedience and emulation: Parents, teachers, and police officers are traditional authority figures for children.
- autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
- auxiliary police — a part-time reserve attached to a regular police force
- auxiliary rafter — a rafter reinforcing a principal rafter.
- 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
- axis of symmetry — Mathematics. a straight line for which every point on a given curve has corresponding to it another point such that the line connecting the two points is bisected by the given line.
- baltimore canyon — a submarine valley cut into the continental shelf and slope seaward of Chesapeake Bay.
- bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
- barbed tributary — a tributary that joins its mainstream in an upstream direction rather than in the more common downstream direction.
- barclay de tolly — Prince Mikhail (mixaˈil). 1761–1818, Russian field marshal: commander in chief against Napoleon in 1812
- barium hydroxide — a white poisonous crystalline solid, used in the manufacture of organic compounds and in the preparation of beet sugar. Formula: Ba(OH)2
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
- batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
- battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- beauty treatment — the use of some form of treatment to improve someone's beauty such as a facial, manicure or depilation
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- 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.
- binuclear family — a social unit composed of an extended family, usually the children and subsequent spouses of divorced parents.
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
- black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- brandy alexander — an Alexander cocktail made with brandy
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
- broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.
- brown-eyed susan — a composite plant, Rudbeckia triloba, of the southeastern U.S., having a single flower with yellow rays darkening to an orange orbrown at the base and a brownish-black disk.
- bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
- buoyancy chamber — an enclosed section of a canoe, float, ship or other object that contains air, foam, or another buoyant substance in order to help maintain buoyancy
- bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
- bury the hatchet — to cease hostilities and become reconciled
- buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
- butterfly ballot — a ballot paper in the form of two leaves extending from a central spine