15-letter words containing o, u, t, n, a
- atrabiliousness — The state or quality of being characterized by melancholy or glumness.
- audio equipment — electrical devices used to play or record sound
- auditor general — (in Canada) a federal official responsible for auditing government departments and making an annual report
- audubon society — a North American organization devoted to the conservancy of birds
- augmented roman — a writing system based on an expanded English alphabet, consisting of 43 characters representing different phonemes of spoken English, used for teaching beginners to read. Abbreviation: I.T.A., i.t.a.
- authentications — Plural form of authentication.
- autocannibalism — The eating of part of one's own body.
- autocollimation — the process used in an autocollimator.
- autocorrelation — the condition occurring when successive items in a series are correlated so that their covariance is not zero and they are not independent
- autofluorescent — Of, pertaining to, or exhibiting autofluorescence.
- autoinoculation — the inoculation of microorganisms (esp viruses) from one part of the body into another, usually in the form of a vaccine
- autotransformer — a transformer in which part of the winding is common to both primary and secondary circuits
- autotransfusion — a process in which a patient receives some of his or her own blood in a transfusion rather than a donor's blood
- autotransplants — Plural form of autotransplant.
- backup rotation — (operating system) Any system for re-using backup media, e.g. magnetic tape. One extreme would be to use the same media for every backup (e.g. copy disk A to disk B), the other extreme would be to use new media every time. The trade-off is between the cost of buying and storing media and the ability to restore any version of any file. One example is the Grandfather, Father, Son (GFS) scheme.
- badminton court — the court on which games of badminton are played
- ball ammunition — live small-arms ammunition
- banking product — one of the various services offered by a bank to its customers: mortgages, loans, insurance etc
- bargain counter — a store counter on which goods are displayed for sale at reduced prices
- barry mountains — a mountain range in SE Australia, in E Victoria: part of the Australian Alps
- basic education — (in India) education in which all teaching is correlated with the learning of a craft
- bathing costume — A bathing costume is a piece of clothing that is worn for swimming, especially by women and girls.
- beast of burden — A beast of burden is an animal such as an ox or a donkey that is used for carrying or pulling things.
- beat one's gums — to talk much and idly
- beat oneself up — to reproach oneself
- beat the bounds — (formerly) to define the boundaries of a parish by making a procession around them and hitting the ground with rods
- bernoulli trial — one of a sequence of independent experiments each of which has the same probability of success, such as successive throws of a die, the outcome of which is described by a binomial distribution
- bioaccumulation — the process in which industrial waste, toxic chemicals, etc. gradually accumulate in living tissue
- bioastronautics — the study of the effects of space flight on living organisms
- bituminous coal — a soft black coal, rich in volatile hydrocarbons, that burns with a smoky yellow flame. Fixed carbon content: 46–86 per cent; calorific value: 1.93 × 107 – 3.63 × 107 J/kg
- black mountains — a mountain range running from N Monmouthshire and SE Powys (Wales) to SW Herefordshire (England). Highest peak: Waun Fach, 811 m (2660 ft)
- book of account — a book to keep accounts in; ledger
- branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- buffalo currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes odoratum, of the central U.S., having showy, drooping clusters of fragrant yellow flowers and edible black fruit.
- button mangrove — a tropical tree, Conocarpus erectus, having small, reddish, conelike fruits and bark used in tanning.
- buy-back option — the option for a company to buy some or all of its shares from an investor, who acquired them by putting venture capital into the company when it was formed
- by all accounts — according to everyone
- call to account — to insist on explanation
- calydonian hunt — the pursuit by Meleager, Atalanta, and others of a savage boar (Calydonian boar) sent by Artemis to lay waste to Calydon.
- campaign button — a disk-shaped pin worn by a supporter of a political candidate, usually bearing the name of the candidate and often a slogan or the candidate's picture.
- cannot help but — to be unable to do anything else except
- capital account — A country's capital account is the part of its balance of payments that is concerned with the movement of capital.
- capitulationism — advocacy or approval of capitulation.
- capitulationist — advocacy or approval of capitulation.
- cartesian doubt — willful suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain: used as a method of deriving, by elimination of such uncertainties, axioms upon which to base theories.
- cast around for — If you cast around for something or cast about for it, you try to find it or think of it.
- cat-o'-mountain — catamountain
- cause of action — the facts alleged in a complaint, upon which is based the plaintiff's right to a legal remedy in a court of law
- centrifugal box — a revolving chamber, used in the spinning of manufactured filaments, in which the plastic fibers, subjected to centrifugal force, are slightly twisted and emerge in the form of yarn wound into the shape of a hollow cylinder.