14-letter words containing e, a
- at knife-point — under threat of being stabbed
- at loggerheads — If two or more people or groups are at loggerheads, they disagree very strongly with each other.
- at one's elbow — within easy reach
- at one's heels — just behind or following closely
- at one's mercy — compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one's power; compassion, pity, or benevolence: Have mercy on the poor sinner.
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- at one's worst — When someone is at their worst, they are as unpleasant, bad, or unsuccessful as it is possible for them to be.
- at second hand — If you experience something at second hand, you are told about it by other people rather than experiencing it yourself.
- at the cost of — at the expense of losing
- at the hand of — through the action of
- at the outside — You use at the outside to say that you think that a particular amount is the largest possible in a particular situation, or that a particular time is the latest possible time for something to happen.
- at&t bell labs — Bell Laboratories
- atacama desert — a desert region along the W coast of South America, mainly in N Chile: a major source of nitrates. Area: about 80 000 sq km (31 000 sq miles)
- athlete's foot — Athlete's foot is a fungal infection in which the skin between the toes becomes cracked or peels off.
- athletic coach — a person qualified to train athletes
- athletic heart — nonpathological enlargement of the heart resulting from intensive aerobic exercise.
- atlantic liner — a large passenger ship that regularly crosses the Atlantic Ocean
- atlantic ocean — the world's second largest ocean, bounded in the north by the Arctic, in the south by the Antarctic, in the west by North and South America, and in the east by Europe and Africa. Greatest depth: 9220 m (30 246 ft). Area: about 81 585 000 sq km (31 500 000 sq miles)
- atlas autocode — (language) The Autocode for the Ferranti Atlas, which may have been the first commercial computer with hardware-paged virtual memory. Whereas other autocodes were basically assembly languages, Atlas Autocode was high-level and block-structured, resembling a cross between Fortran and ALGOL 60. It had call-by value, loops, declarations, complex numbers, pointers, heap and stack storage generators, dynamic arrays, and extensible syntax.
- atomic reactor — reactor (def 4).
- atomic veteran — a veteran of the armed forces who was exposed to radioactivity during the testing or use of nuclear (atomic) weapons in World War II or subsequent wars.
- atomic warfare — war in which nuclear weapons are used
- atomic-powered — powered by atomic energy
- atrial flutter — irregular heart rhythm
- attainableness — The state or quality of being attainable.
- attemptability — the capability of being attempted or condition of being attemptable
- attention line — a line of text after the address on a piece of correspondence, directing it to a particular person or department.
- attention span — the period of time during which someone's attention is held by something in particular
- attractiveness — providing pleasure or delight, especially in appearance or manner; pleasing; charming; alluring: an attractive personality.
- attrition rate — the rate at which customers or subscribers switch from one supplier to another
- auction bridge — a variety of bridge, now generally superseded by contract bridge, in which all the tricks made score towards the game
- audience share — the percentage of households with television sets in use or tuned to a particular station during a specific period of time.
- audio response — a computer response that is audible rather than textual or graphical
- audio-cassette — a cassette of tape on which sound only is recorded
- audiocassettes — Plural form of audiocassette.
- auditory nerve — either of the eighth pair of cranial nerves, which connect the ear with the brain and carry impulses relating to sound and balance
- augean stables — the stables, not cleaned for 30 years, where King Augeas kept 3000 oxen. Hercules diverted the River Alpheus through them and cleaned them in a day
- auger-electron — a nonradiative process in which an atom in an excited state undergoes a transition to a lower state by the emission of a bound electron (Auger electron) rather than by the emission of an x-ray.
- augmentatively — In an augmentative fashion.
- auld lang syne — Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish song about friendship that is traditionally sung as clocks strike midnight on New Year's Eve.
- aurothiomalate — (chemistry) A thiomalate with the addition of gold.
- auspiciousness — The state or quality of being auspicious or successful.
- aussie battler — an Australian working-class person
- austrian shade — a window shade in which the fabric falls in a series of puffy festoons created by vertical rows of shirring.
- authenticating — to establish as genuine.
- authentication — to establish as genuine.
- authority file — a file, either on cards or in machine-readable format, in which decisions involving bibliographic records, particularly for form of entry, are recorded to establish a precedent or rule for subsequent decisions and to provide for consistency of entries.
- autoantibodies — Plural form of autoantibody.
- autobiographer — a person who writes the story of his or her own life
- autoconfiscate — (software, jargon) A term coined by Noah Friedman meaning to set up or modify a source-code distribution so that it configures and builds using the GNU project's autoconf/automake/libtools suite.