14-letter words containing r, i, a, t
- at first blush — when first seen; as a first impression
- at first sight — If you say that something seems to have certain characteristics at first sight, you mean that it appears to have the features you describe when you first see it but later it is found to be different.
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- athletic heart — nonpathological enlargement of the heart resulting from intensive aerobic exercise.
- atlantic liner — a large passenger ship that regularly crosses the Atlantic Ocean
- atomic orbital — Physics, Chemistry. a wave function describing the state of a single electron in an atom (atomic orbital) or in a molecule (molecular orbital) the electron in that state.
- atomic reactor — reactor (def 4).
- atomic veteran — a veteran of the armed forces who was exposed to radioactivity during the testing or use of nuclear (atomic) weapons in World War II or subsequent wars.
- atomic warfare — war in which nuclear weapons are used
- atomic-powered — powered by atomic energy
- atrial flutter — irregular heart rhythm
- attitudinarian — a person who assumes an affected attitude
- attractability — The quality of being attractable.
- attractiveness — providing pleasure or delight, especially in appearance or manner; pleasing; charming; alluring: an attractive personality.
- attrition rate — the rate at which customers or subscribers switch from one supplier to another
- auction bridge — a variety of bridge, now generally superseded by contract bridge, in which all the tricks made score towards the game
- auditory canal — the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum.
- auditory nerve — either of the eighth pair of cranial nerves, which connect the ear with the brain and carry impulses relating to sound and balance
- aurothiomalate — (chemistry) A thiomalate with the addition of gold.
- aussie battler — an Australian working-class person
- austrian blind — a window blind consisting of rows of vertically gathered fabric that may be drawn up to form a series of ruches
- austrian shade — a window shade in which the fabric falls in a series of puffy festoons created by vertical rows of shirring.
- austro-asiatic — a hypothetical phylum or superfamily of languages consisting of Mon-Khmer and certain other languages of India and South-East Asia. Links with Malayo-Polynesian have also been suggested
- authorisations — Plural form of authorisation.
- authoritarians — Plural form of authoritarian.
- authority file — a file, either on cards or in machine-readable format, in which decisions involving bibliographic records, particularly for form of entry, are recorded to establish a precedent or rule for subsequent decisions and to provide for consistency of entries.
- authorizations — Plural form of authorization.
- autobiographer — a person who writes the story of his or her own life
- autobiographic — marked by or dealing with one's own experiences or life history; of or in the manner of an autobiography: autobiographical material; an autobiographical novel.
- autocollimator — an instrument combining the functions of a telescope and collimator, for detecting and measuring very small deviations in a beam of light.
- autocovariance — (statistics) The covariance of a signal with another part of the same signal.
- autocratically — In an autocratic manner.
- automatic door — a self-opening door
- autoradiograph — a photograph showing the distribution of a radioactive substance in a specimen. The photographic plate is exposed by radiation from the specimen
- autoreactivity — (immunology) The condition of being autoreactive.
- autoregression — (mathematics) An autoregressive process that is used to model many types of natural behaviour.
- autoregressive — (statistics) Employing autoregression, using a weighted sample of past data to predict future results.
- autoregulation — the continual automatic adjustment or self-regulation of a biochemical, physiological, or ecological system to maintain a stable state.
- autotetraploid — an individual or strain whose chromosome complement consists of four copies of a single genome due to doubling of an ancestral chromosome complement
- auxiliary note — a nonharmonic note occurring between two harmonic notes
- auxiliary tone — a melodic ornamental tone following a principal tone by a step above or below and returning to the principal tone; embellishment.
- avalokitesvara — a male Bodhisattva, widely revered and identified with various persons and gods.
- axis-ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- azimuth circle — a device for measuring azimuths, consisting of a graduated ring equipped with a sighting vane on each side, which fits concentrically over a compass.
- babies'-breath — baby's breath
- baby-battering — the physical abuse of a baby or young child
- back formation — the invention of a new word on the assumption that a familiar word is derived from it. The verbs edit and burgle were so created from editor and burglar
- back-formation — the analogical creation of one word from another word that appears to be a derived or inflected form of the first by dropping the apparent affix or by modification.
- backscattering — the scattering of rays or particles at angles to the original direction of motion of greater than 90°
- backscratching — a long-handled device for scratching one's own back.