21-letter words containing e, d, w
- luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
- madagascar periwinkle — a plant, Catharanthus roseus (or Vinca rosea), cultivated for its glossy foliage and pink or white flowers.
- maidenhair spleenwort — an evergreen fern, Asplenium trichomanes, abundant in woody areas of the North Temperate Zone, having thickly clustered fronds.
- maryland yellowthroat — (in former systems of nomenclature) the common yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, especially the eastern U.S. subspecies.
- medical social worker — a person who works in a hospital and is responsible for offering counselling to patients and their families and ensuring that discharged patients will receive appropriate care in the community
- medium dry white wine — Medium dry white wine is white wine that is not very sweet.
- member of the wedding — a novel (1946) and play (1950) by Carson McCullers.
- model-view-controller — (programming) (MVC) A way of partitioning the design of interactive software; a software architecture pattern. The "model" is the internal workings of the program (the data objects and algorithms), the "view" is how the user sees the state of the model and the "controller" is how the user changes the state or provides input. MVC was the original kind of what is now sometimes called an MV* pattern. Trygve Reenskaug introduced it into Smalltalk-76 while visiting Xerox PARC in the 1970s.
- motherwell and wishaw — a burgh in the Motherwell district, in S Scotland.
- network administrator — (job) A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.
- phillips screw-driver — a screw head having two partial slots crossed at right angles, driven by a special screwdriver (Phillips screwdriver)
- play one's cards well — to use one's resources in the most effective manner
- play with a full deck — Nautical. a floorlike surface wholly or partially occupying one level of a hull, superstructure, or deckhouse, generally cambered, and often serving as a member for strengthening the structure of a vessel. the space between such a surface and the next such surface above: Our stateroom was on B deck.
- populist shop steward — a shop steward who operates in a delegate role, putting the immediate interests of his members before union principles and policies
- prader-willi syndrome — a congenital condition characterized by obsessive eating, obesity, learning difficulties, and small genitalia
- red-headed woodpecker — a black and white North American woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, having a red head and neck.
- redwood national park — a national park in N California: redwood forest with some of the world's tallest trees. 172 sq. mi. (445 sq. km).
- ring down the curtain — to lower the curtain at the end of a theatrical performance
- safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
- sail against the wind — to sail a course that slants slightly away from the true direction of the wind; sail closehauled
- second-hand endowment — A second-hand endowment is a traditional with-profits endowment policy that has been sold to a new owner part way through its term.
- set the world on fire — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- show someone the door — a movable, usually solid, barrier for opening and closing an entranceway, cupboard, cabinet, or the like, commonly turning on hinges or sliding in grooves.
- sir william alexander — Sir William (Alexander) 1867–1957, Scottish lexicographer and philologist.
- slatwall merchandiser — A slatwall merchandiser is a three-dimensional display unit with grooves cut into its surface into which metal hanging rails can be fixed at various heights.
- sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
- step-down transformer — a device that transfers an alternating current from one circuit to one or more other circuits with a decrease of voltage
- submerged arc welding — a type of heavy electric-arc welding using mechanically fed bare wire with the arc submerged in powdered flux to keep out oxygen
- surface-to-underwater — (of a missile, message, etc.) traveling from the surface of the earth to a target underwater.
- swim against the tide — to resist prevailing opinion
- synchronized swimming — a sport growing out of water ballet in which swimmers, in solo, duet, and team efforts, complete various required figures by performing motions in relatively stationary positions, along with a freestyle competition, with the contestants synchronizing movements to music and being judged for body position, control, and the degree of difficulty of the moves.
- take sb at their word — If you take someone at their word, you believe what they say, when they did not really mean it or when they meant something slightly different.
- the break of day/dawn — The break of day or the break of dawn is the time when it begins to grow light after the night.
- the middle of nowhere — remote place
- the women's land army — a unit of women recruited to do agricultural work in the United Kingdom during World War I and World War II
- the yellow brick road — the road to success or happiness (in the film the Wizard of Oz the yellow brick road leads to Oz)
- thin end of the wedge — anything unimportant in itself that implies the start of something much larger
- three-toed woodpecker — either of two woodpeckers of the genus Picoides, of the Northern Hemisphere, having only three toes on each foot.
- threshold wage policy — a policy whereby wages are increased in accordance with inflation
- to blow sth wide open — to expose something
- to lay down your life — If someone lays down their life for another person, they die so that the other person can live.
- to let your hair down — If you let your hair down, you relax completely and enjoy yourself.
- to put the wind up sb — If something or someone puts the wind up you, they frighten or worry you.
- to rub shoulders with — If you rub shoulders with famous people, you meet them and talk to them. You can also say that you rub elbows with someone, especially in American English.
- under one's own steam — If you do something under your own steam, you do it without any help from anyone else.
- up hill and down dale — strenuously and persistently
- watenstedt-salzgitter — former name of Salzgitter.
- weak head normal form — (reduction, theory) (WHNF) A lambda expression is in weak head normal form (WHNF) if it is a head normal form (HNF) or any lambda abstraction. I.e. the top level is not a redex. The term was coined by Simon Peyton Jones to make explicit the difference between head normal form (HNF) and what graph reduction systems produce in practice. A lambda abstraction with a reducible body, e.g. \ x . ((\ y . y+x) 2) is in WHNF but not HNF. To reduce this expression to HNF would require reduction of the lambda body: (\ y . y+x) 2 --> 2+x Reduction to WHNF avoids the name capture problem with its need for alpha conversion of an inner lambda abstraction and so is preferred in practical graph reduction systems. The same principle is often used in strict languages such as Scheme to provide call-by-name evaluation by wrapping an expression in a lambda abstraction with no arguments: D = delay E = \ () . E The value of the expression is obtained by applying it to the empty argument list:
- well-ordering theorem — the theorem of set theory that every set can be made a well-ordered set.
- wet collodion process — a photographic process, in common use in the mid-19th century, employing a glass photographic plate coated with iodized collodion and dipped in a silver nitrate solution immediately before use.