16-letter words containing o, n, a
- as likely as not — very probably
- ascidian tadpole — the free-swimming larva of an ascidian, having a tadpole-like tail containing the notochord and nerve cord
- ashmolean museum — a museum, attached to Oxford University and founded in 1683, noted for its paintings and archaeological collections
- assembly routine — assembler (def 2a).
- assigned counsel — any private lawyer designated by a city or county court to represent indigent defendants in criminal cases at public expense.
- assimilationists — Plural form of assimilationist.
- assistant editor — a person who assists an editor in their work
- association area — any of the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain connected by numerous nerve fibers to all parts of both cerebral hemispheres and coordinating such higher activities as learning and reasoning.
- associationistic — Of or pertaining to associationism.
- aston dark space — the dark region between the cathode and the cathode glow in a vacuum tube, occurring when the pressure is low.
- astroengineering — (scifi) The construction of megastructures in space by technologically advanced beings.
- 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 bayonet point — done while having a bayonet pointed at one
- at one's leisure — when one has free time
- atlantic croaker — a person or thing that croaks.
- atomic mass unit — a unit of mass used to express atomic and molecular weights that is equal to one twelfth of the mass of an atom of carbon-12. It is equivalent to 1.66 × 10–27 kg
- atrioventricular — of, relating to, or affecting both the atria and the ventricles of the heart
- attendance order — (in Britain) an order issued by a court requiring a young offender to attend a specified place at specified times in order to carry out unpaid work, usually as an alternative to being fined
- attitude of mind — Your attitude of mind is your general way of thinking and feeling.
- 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.
- attributive noun — a noun that occurs before and modifies another noun, as toy in toy store or tour in tour group.
- atwood's machine — a device consisting of two unequal masses connected by a string passed over a pulley, used to illustrate the laws of motion.
- auction pinochle — a variety of pinochle for three to five players in which, for every hand, there are three active players, each dealt 15 cards, with the highest bidder winning the contract and playing against the other two active opponents.
- audio conference — a meeting that is conducted by the use of audio telecommunications
- aulnay-sous-bois — a town in N central France, a suburb NE of Paris.
- austro-hungarian — of or relating to the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)
- authentification — The process of making, or establishing as, authentic.
- authoritarianism — Authoritarianism is the state of being authoritarian or the belief that people with power, especially the State, have the right to control other people's actions.
- autoethnographic — Using ethnographic techniques to describe one's own life, or events in which one is a participant.
- autofluorescence — (biology, microscopy) Self-induced fluorescence.
- autoimmunization — antibody production by an organism in response to and against any of its own tissues, cells, or cell components.
- autointoxication — self-poisoning caused by absorption of toxic products originating within the body
- automanipulation — physical stimulation of one's own genitals.
- automatrix, inc. — (company) The company which produced CAM-PC. Address: Ballston Spa, NY, USA.
- autotransformers — Plural form of autotransformer.
- autotransfusions — Plural form of autotransfusion.
- autumnal equinox — the time at which the sun crosses the plane of the equator away from the relevant hemisphere, making day and night of equal length. It occurs about Sept 23 in the N hemisphere (March 21 in the S hemisphere)
- avail oneself of — to make use of to one's advantage
- avalon peninsula — a large peninsula of Newfoundland, between Trinity and Placentia Bays. Area: about 10 000 sq km (4000 sq miles)
- 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
- azodicarbonamide — (chemistry) An organic chemical, a yellow to orange red, odorless, crystalline powder, used in food industry as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent and improving agent and in foaming plastics.
- azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
- babylonian exile — the exile of the Jews, deported by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylonia in 597 b.c. and permitted to return by Cyrus in 538 b.c.
- back-propagation — (Or "backpropagation") A learning algorithm for modifying a feed-forward neural network which minimises a continuous "error function" or "objective function." Back-propagation is a "gradient descent" method of training in that it uses gradient information to modify the network weights to decrease the value of the error function on subsequent tests of the inputs. Other gradient-based methods from numerical analysis can be used to train networks more efficiently. Back-propagation makes use of a mathematical trick when the network is simulated on a digital computer, yielding in just two traversals of the network (once forward, and once back) both the difference between the desired and actual output, and the derivatives of this difference with respect to the connection weights.
- background check — an investigation into a person's origins and previous history
- background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
- background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
- background paper — a report or other piece of writing that is intended to provide contextual and historical information that will help people understand a particular topic or situation
- backus-naur form — (language, grammar) (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of Donald Knuth. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a metasyntax?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see RFC 2234). Consider this BNF for a US postal address:
::= ::= | "." ::= [ ] | ::= [ ] ::= "," This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the regexp wild cards such as "*" or "+". EBNF is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the ALGOL 60 report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognised. ABNF is another extension.