15-letter words containing o, u
- atrabiliousness — The state or quality of being characterized by melancholy or glumness.
- audio equipment — electrical devices used to play or record sound
- audio frequency — a frequency in the range 20 hertz to 20 000 hertz. A sound wave of this frequency would be audible to the human ear
- audio recording — an electronic recording of 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.
- augusta gregory — Lady Augusta (Isabella Augusta Persse) 1852–1932, Irish dramatist.
- aurora borealis — the aurora seen around the North Pole
- authentications — Plural form of authentication.
- authoritatively — having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority: an authoritative opinion.
- autobiographers — Plural form of autobiographer.
- autobiographies — Plural form of autobiography.
- 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
- autocorrelative — Relating to autocorrelation.
- autodestructive — likely to cause one's own destruction
- autodidacticism — any self-directed learning or self-education
- 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
- autolithography — a lithographic technique by which the artist draws or traces with a brush and pen directly on a stone or plate.
- automata theory — the formal study of the power of computation of abstract machines
- automatic drive — an automotive transmission requiring either very little or no manual shifting of gears.
- automatic focus — a system in a camera which automatically adjusts the lens so that the object being photographed is in focus, often one using infrared light to estimate the distance of the object from the camera
- automatic pilot — An automatic pilot or an autopilot is a device in an aircraft that automatically keeps it on a particular course.
- automatic rifle — a type of light machine gun capable of firing automatically or in single shots.
- automorphically — in an automorphic manner
- autoradiographs — Plural form of autoradiograph.
- autoradiography — the technique or process of making autoradiographs.
- autorhythmicity — The quality of being autorhythmic, or generating its own rhythm, as for example the cells of the cardiac muscle do.
- autoschediastic — offhand, with little forethought or preparation
- autostereoscopy — The display of stereoscopic images without the use of special viewing equipment.
- autotetraploidy — the generation of the tetraploid state, created by the fusing of two nuclei from the same species
- 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.
- autotrophically — through an autotrophic process
- auxiliary rotor — the tail rotor of a helicopter, used for directional and rotary control
- azuchi-momoyama — a period of Japanese art, 1568–1600, characterized by construction of imposing, elegant castles and small, unadorned teahouses, lavish decorative arts, and bright-colored painting.
- 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.
- backup software — (tool, software) Software for doing a backup, often included as part of the operating system. Backup software should provide ways to specify what files get backed up and to where. It may include its own scheduling function to automate the procedure or, preferably, work with generic scheduling facilities. It may include facilities for managing the backup media (e.g. maintaining an index of tapes) and for restoring files from backups. Examples are Unix's dump command and Windows's ntbackup.
- bacteriophagous — Pertaining to the predation and consumption of bacterium.
- bad housekeeper — a person who is not an efficient and thrifty domestic manager
- 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
- barium chloride — a poisonous compound, BaCl2, consisting of flat white crystals that are soluble in water: it is used to treat water, metals, leather, etc.
- barium chromate — a yellow, crystalline compound, BaCrO 4 , used as a pigment (barium yellow)