9-letter words containing o, y, a
- gargoyled — (of a building) Having gargoyles carved into it.
- gargoyles — Plural form of gargoyle.
- garryowen — (rugby union) A high short punt onto or behind the defending team.
- gasometry — the measurement of gases.
- gay power — the organized political influence exerted by homosexuals as a group, especially to ensure equal rights in employment, housing, etc.
- gaycation — a holiday specifically designed for the gay market
- genealogy — a record or account of the ancestry and descent of a person, family, group, etc.
- geobotany — phytogeography.
- geography — the science dealing with the areal differentiation of the earth's surface, as shown in the character, arrangement, and interrelations over the world of such elements as climate, elevation, soil, vegetation, population, land use, industries, or states, and of the unit areas formed by the complex of these individual elements.
- glory-pea — either of two trailing plants, Clianthus formosus or C. puniceus, of Australia and New Zealand, having showy red flowers.
- glycation — (biochemistry) non-enzymatic reaction of a sugar and an amine group of a protein to form a glycoprotein.
- glycolate — a salt or ester of glycolic acid.
- go astray — person: deviate from correct or good way
- go steady — firmly placed or fixed; stable in position or equilibrium: a steady ladder.
- goadingly — So as to goad or incite.
- goatishly — In a goatish way.
- golomynka — an oily fish found only in Lake Baikal
- gonyaulax — any marine dinoflagellate of the genus Gonyaulax, sometimes occurring in great numbers and causing red tide.
- goody bag — A goody bag is a bag of little gifts, often given away by manufacturers in order to encourage people to try their products.
- goose bay — an air base in S central Labrador, in Newfoundland, in E Canada, on the great circle route between New York and London: used as a fuel stop by some transatlantic airplanes.
- gossamery — a fine, filmy cobweb seen on grass or bushes or floating in the air in calm weather, especially in autumn.
- gradatory — (architecture) A series of steps from a cloister into a church.
- gray body — any body that emits radiation at each wavelength in a constant ratio less than unity to that emitted by a black body at the same temperature.
- gray code — (hardware) A binary sequence with the property that only one bit changes between any two consecutive elements (the two codes have a Hamming distance of one). The Gray code originated when digital logic circuits were built from vacuum tubes and electromechanical relays. Counters generated tremendous power demands and noise spikes when many bits changed at once. E.g. when incrementing a register containing 11111111, the back-EMF from the relays' collapsing magnetic fields required copious noise suppression. Using Gray code counters, any increment or decrement changed only one bit, regardless of the size of the number. Gray code can also be used to convert the angular position of a disk to digital form. A radial line of sensors reads the code off the surface of the disk and if the disk is half-way between two positions each sensor might read its bit from both positions at once but since only one bit differs between the two, the value read is guaranteed to be one of the two valid values rather than some third (invalid) combination (a glitch). One possible algorithm for generating a Gray code sequence is to toggle the lowest numbered bit that results in a new code each time. Here is a four bit Gray code sequence generated in this way: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 The codes were patented in 1953 by Frank Gray, a Bell Labs researcher.
- gray iron — pig iron or cast iron having much of its carbon in the form of graphite and exhibiting a gray fracture.
- gray mold — a disease of plants, characterized by a gray, furry coating on the decaying parts, caused by any of several fungi.
- gray wolf — a wolf, Canis lupus, having a usually grizzled, blackish, or whitish coat: formerly common in Eurasia and North America, some subspecies are now reduced in numbers or near extinction.
- grayhound — one of a breed of tall, slender, short-haired dogs, noted for its keen sight and swiftness.
- graystone — (uncountable) A type of gray, volcanic rock, typically containing feldspar and iron.
- gustatory — of or relating to taste or tasting.
- gynaecoid — Characteristic of a woman.
- gynobasic — an elevation of the receptacle of a flower, bearing the gynoecium.
- gynocracy — gynarchy.
- gyrations — Plural form of gyration.
- gyrfalcon — a large falcon, Falco rusticolus, of arctic and subarctic regions, having white, gray, or blackish color phases: now greatly reduced in number.
- gyromancy — a method of prediction or prophecy in which a person moves round and round in a circle and the place at which they fall to the ground is said to be highly significant
- gyroplane — autogiro.
- gyrovague — a vagrant monk who wandered from one monastery to another.
- haemocyte — Alternative spelling of hemocyte.
- haemolyse — to break down red blood cells so that haemoglobin is released
- hagiology — the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of the saints.
- halcyonic — calm; peaceful; tranquil: halcyon weather.
- halomancy — Divination by use of salt. This is the origin for the superstition of spilled salt.
- halophily — the ability or predisposition to thrive in an extremely salty environment
- halophyte — a plant that thrives in saline soil.
- handywork — Dated form of handiwork.
- haplology — the omission of one of two similar adjacent syllables or sounds in a word, as in substituting morphonemic for morphophonemic or in the pronunciation [prob-lee] /ˈprɒb li/ (Show IPA) for probably.
- haplotype — Genetics. a combination of closely linked DNA sequences on one chromosome that are often inherited together: By comparing haplotypes of a mother and father with those of a fetus, scientists can study how new genetic changes arise.
- hard copy — copy, as computer output printed on paper, that can be read without using a special device (opposed to soft copy).
- hawthorny — resembling or characterized by hawthorns