24-letter words containing n, o, t, e, a

to break someone's heart — If someone breaks your heart, they make you very sad and unhappy, usually because they end a love affair or close relationship with you.
to change for the better — If something changes for the better, it improves.
to cramp someone's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behaviour in some way.
to fight a losing battle — If you are fighting a losing battle, you are trying to achieve something but are not going to be successful.
to go for the brass ring — to try to succeed in an area where there is a lot of competition
to have egg on your face — If someone has egg on their face or has egg all over their face, they have been made to look foolish.
to have it in mind to do — If you have it in mind to do something, you intend or want to do it.
to have not got a prayer — If you say that someone hasn't got a prayer, you mean that it is impossible for them to succeed in what they are trying to do.
to have seen better days — If you say that something has seen better days, you mean that it is old and in poor condition.
to have to hand it to sb — You say things such as 'You have to hand it to her' or 'You've got to hand it to them' when you admire someone for their skills or achievements and you think they deserve a lot of praise.
to jump on the bandwagon — If someone, especially a politician, jumps or climbs on the bandwagon, they become involved in an activity or movement because it is fashionable or likely to succeed and not because they are really interested in it.
to keep something at bay — If you keep something or someone at bay, or hold them at bay, you prevent them from reaching, attacking, or affecting you.
to lay something to rest — If you lay something such as fears or rumours to rest or if you put them to rest, you succeed in proving that they are not true.
to make boundary changes — to change the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies, because of population shifts
to move heaven and earth — If you move heaven and earth to do something, you try as hard as you can to do it.
to one's heart's content — Anatomy. a hollow, pumplike organ of blood circulation, composed mainly of rhythmically contractile smooth muscle, located in the chest between the lungs and slightly to the left and consisting of four chambers: a right atrium that receives blood returning from the body via the superior and inferior vena cavae, a right ventricle that pumps the blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation, a left atrium that receives the oxygenated blood via the pulmonary veins and passes it through the mitral valve, and a left ventricle that pumps the oxygenated blood, via the aorta, throughout the body.
to pick someone's brains — If you pick someone's brains, you ask them to help you with a problem because they know more about the subject than you.
to rise to the challenge — If someone rises to the challenge, they act in response to a difficult situation which is new to them and are successful.
to speak well of someone — If you speak well of someone or speak highly of someone, you say good things about them. If you speak ill of someone, you criticize them.
tools of one's/the trade — The tools of your trade or the tools of the trade are the skills, instruments, and other equipment that you need in order to do your job properly.
total quality management — Total quality management is a set of management principles aimed at improving performance throughout a company, especially by involving employees in decision-making. The abbreviation TQM is also used.
trading standards office — an office of the local authority department that deals with trading standards
transpersonal psychology — a branch of psychology or psychotherapy that recognizes altered states of consciousness and transcendent experiences as a means to understand the human mind and treat psychological disordrs.
tread on someone's corns — to offend or hurt someone by touching on a sensitive subject or encroaching on his privileges
trotskyist international — Fourth International.
tuva autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Asia: formerly an independent republic in Mongolia. 65,810 sq. mi. (170,500 sq. km). Capital: Kyzyl.
twin vector quantization — (audio, compression) (VQF) Part of the MPEG-4 standard dealing with time domain weighted interleaved vector quantization.
two/three/four of a kind — If you refer, for example, to two, three, or four of a kind, you mean two, three, or four similar people or things that seem to go well or belong together.
under the sway of sb/sth — If you are under the sway of someone or something, they have great influence over you.
under-secretary of state — any of various high officials subordinate only to the minister in charge of a department
uniform resource locater — Uniform Resource Locator
uniform resource locator — (web) (URL, previously "Universal") A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. Other types of object are described below. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hypertext link which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer). Here are some example URLs: http://w3.org/default.html http://acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif http://foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator http://w3.org/default.html#Introduction ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz mailto:[email protected] news:alt.hypertext telnet://dra.com The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or protocol. Commonly implemented schemes include: ftp, http (web), gopher or WAIS. The "file" scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same host. Other less commonly used schemes include news, telnet or mailto (e-mail). The part after the colon is interpreted according to the access scheme. In general, two slashes after the colon introduce a hostname (host:port is also valid, or for FTP user:[email protected] or [email protected]). The port number is usually omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme, e.g. port 80 for HTTP. For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a pathname which is usually related to the pathname of a file on the server. The file can contain any type of data but only certain types are interpreted directly by most browsers. These include HTML and images in gif or jpeg format. The file's type is given by a MIME type in the HTTP headers returned by the server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also indicated by its filename extension. A file whose type is not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an external "viewer" application, e.g. a sound player. The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#". The later indicates a particular position within the specified document. Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are safe and may be transmitted unencoded. Other characters are encoded as a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. Space may also be encoded as "+". Standard SGML "&;" character entity encodings (e.g. "é") are also accepted when URLs are embedded in HTML. The terminating semicolon may be omitted if & is followed by a non-letter character.
united states of america — United States. Abbreviation: U.S.A., USA.
van allen radiation belt — a broad, doughnut-shaped region surrounding the earth and composed of high-energy electrons and protons trapped in the earth's magnetic field at heights between c. 400 km (c. 250 mi) and c. 64,370 km (c. 40,000 mi)
vaporization temperature — Vaporization temperature is the temperature at which liquid is converted into vapor without any change in temperature.
ventricular fibrillation — Pathology. a cardiac arrhythmia characterized by rapid, chaotic electrical impulses to the ventricles, incomplete ventricular contractions, and resultant loss of pulse and blood pressure.
veterans of foreign wars — an organization of U.S. veterans who have served in foreign wars: founded in 1899
video cassette recording — a recording made using a tape recorder for vision and sound signals using magnetic tape in closed plastic cassettes: used for recording and playing back television programmes and films
vienna definition method — Vienna Development Method
virtual home environment — (VHE) A tool for using NFS on HP UX.
virtual storage extended — (operating system) (VSE, formerly DOS/VSE) is a multitasking, IBM 370-architected operating system similar to Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS). VSE run jobs in partitions rather than address spaces, and uses POWER for input/output rather than JES, but is largely similar to MVS. Subsequent VSE/ESA releases gave VSE the XA-370 channel architecture, 31-bit virtual and real storage support, and data spaces. VSE is the IBM operating system on one-third of installed IBM 4381s and a significant proportion of IBM 9370s as well. It offers transaction processing and batch processing capabilities well beyond Virtual Machine's current capabilities, and has a close affinity with MVS.
visual component library — (programming) VCL A application framework library for Microsoft Windows and Borland Software Corp.'s Delphi and C++Builder rapid application development software. VCL was originally designed for Delphi but is now also used for C++Builder. This replaces OWL Object Windows Library as Borland's Windows C++ framework of choice. VCL encapsulates the C-based Win32 API into a much easier to use, object-oriented form. Like its direct rival, Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), VCL includes classes to create Windows programs. The VCL component class can be inherited to create new VCL components, which are the building blocks of Delphi and C++Builder applications. VCL components are somewhat in competition with ActiveX controls, though a VCL wrapper can be created to make an ActiveX control seem like a VCL component.
volume table of contents — (storage) (VTOC) /V-tock/ A special file on a disk, which contains a list of all the ordinary files on the disk and their addresses. Also called a directory. The term is used mostly with large mainframe disk drives. Storage administrators will often refer to the VTOC to obtain information on the number of files stored on a disk.
voluntary aid detachment — (in World War I) an organization of British women volunteers who assisted in military hospitals and ambulance duties
water of crystallization — water of hydration, formerly thought necessary to crystallization: now usually regarded as affecting crystallization only as it forms new molecular combinations.
ways and means committee — a standing committee of the US House of Representatives that supervises all financial legislation
webster-ashburton treaty — U.S. History. an agreement between the U.S. and England (1842) defining the boundary between British and American territory from Maine to present-day Minnesota.
what are you playing at? — If you ask what someone is playing at, you are angry because you think they are doing something stupid or wrong.
what are you waiting for — If you say to someone 'What are you waiting for?' you are telling them to hurry up and do something.
when the balloon goes up — when the trouble or action begins

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