16-letter words containing o, y, s
- thermoplasticity — soft and pliable when heated, as some plastics, without any change of the inherent properties.
- time sovereignty — control by an employee of the use of his or her time, involving flexibility of working hours
- to cut both ways — If you say that something cuts both ways, you mean that it can have two opposite effects, or can have both good and bad effects.
- to dip your toes — If you dip your toes into something or dip your toes into the waters of something, you start doing that thing slowly and carefully, because you are not sure whether it will be successful or whether you will like it.
- to get your oats — to have sexual intercourse regularly
- to pay dividends — If something pays dividends, it brings advantages at a later date.
- to say the least — at the minimum
- to sow your oats — (of a young person) to behave in a rather uncontrolled way, esp by having a lot of sexual relationships
- to spend a penny — If someone says that they are going to spend a penny, they mean that they are going to go to the toilet.
- tobacco industry — business of selling smoking products
- tokugawa iyeyasu — Tokugawa [taw-koo-gah-wah] /ˈtɔ kuˈgɑ wɑ/ (Show IPA), 1542–1616, Japanese general and public servant.
- top drive system — A top drive system is a system which includes a motor that turns the drill string, used instead of the kelly.
- tourist industry — the people, activities, and organizations involved in providing services for people on holiday, for example hotels, restaurants, and tour guides
- transfer company — a company that transports people or luggage for a relatively short distance, as between terminals of two railroad lines.
- transmethylation — the transfer of a methyl group from one compound to another.
- twenty questions — an oral game in which one player selects a word or object whose identity the other players attempt to guess by asking up to twenty questions that can be answered with a yes or a no.
- two-family house — a house designed for occupation by two families in contiguous apartments, as on separate floors.
- two-party system — a political system consisting chiefly of two major parties, more or less equal in strength.
- two-stroke cycle — See under two-cycle.
- typhoid bacillus — the bacterium Salmonella typhosa, causing typhoid fever.
- uncompromisingly — not admitting of compromise or adjustment of differences; making no concessions; inaccessible to flexible bargaining; unyielding: an uncompromising attitude.
- undiscriminatory — characterized by or showing prejudicial treatment, especially as an indication of bias related to age, color, national origin, religion, sex, etc.: discriminatory practices in housing; a discriminatory tax.
- unostentatiously — (of a person) in a manner that is not trying to impress people with one's wealth or importance
- up to one's eyes — extremely busy (with)
- utility software — system software that manages and optimizes the performance of hardware
- vegetable oyster — salsify.
- videodisc player — an electronic device for playing videodiscs through a television set.
- voluntary muscle — muscle whose action is normally controlled by an individual's will; mainly skeletal muscle, composed of parallel bundles of striated, multinucleate fibers.
- voluntary school — a school that promotes specific religious beliefs and which is funded by a local education authority but was not established by the authority
- voluntary sector — the part of the economy that consists of non-profit-making organizations, as opposed to the public and private sectors
- way of all flesh — a novel (1903) by Samuel Butler.
- way of the cross — stations of the cross.
- weather advisory — advisory (def 5).
- whole nine yards — a common unit of linear measure in English-speaking countries, equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, and equivalent to 0.9144 meter.
- wild honeysuckle — pinxter flower.
- windows registry — (operating system) The database used by Microsoft Windows 95 and later to store all sorts of configuration information such as which program should be used to open a .doc file, DLL registration information, application-specific settings and much more. The Registry is stored in .dat files, one in the user's profile containing their per-user settings and one in the Windows directory containing settings that are global to all users. These are loaded into memory at login. The loaded data appears as a tree with five main branches: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_USERS, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT defines file types and actions, HKEY_CURRENT_USER is an alias for one of the sub-trees of HKEY_USERS and contains user settings that override the global defaults in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. The branches of the tree are called "keys" and are identified by paths like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion. Any node in the tree can have zero or more "values" which are actually bindings of a name and a value, e.g. "Logon User Name" = "Denis". The value can be of type string, binary, dword (long integer), multi-string value or expandable string value. Windows includes a Registry Editor (regedit.exe).
- windy conditions — weather in which there are strong winds
- woody nightshade — bittersweet (def 3).
- worcester oyster — a drink consisting of raw unbeaten egg, Worcester sauce, salt, and pepper: a supposed cure for a hangover
- yah-boo politics — adversarial politics in which politicians constantly deride their opponents and dismiss everything suggested by them
- yellowstone lake — a lake in NW Wyoming, in Yellowstone National Park. 20 miles (32 km) long; 140 sq. mi. (363 sq. km).
- yeoman's service — good, useful, or workmanlike service: His trusty sword did him yeoman's service.
- zygosporangium's — a sporangium that bears a zygospore.