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16-letter words containing r, u

  • aurora australis — the aurora seen around the South Pole
  • australian crawl — a stroke in which the feet are kicked like paddles while the arms reach forward and pull back through the water
  • australian rules — a game resembling rugby football, played in Australia between teams of 18 men each on an oval pitch, with a ball resembling a large rugby ball. Players attempt to kick the ball between posts (without crossbars) at either end of the pitch, scoring six points for a goal (between the two main posts) and one point for a behind (between either of two outer posts and the main posts). They may punch or kick the ball and run with it provided that they bounce it every ten yards
  • australopithecus — an extinct genus of small-brained,large-toothed bipedal hominids that lived in Africa between one and four million years ago.
  • austro-hungarian — of or relating to the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)
  • authoritarianism — Authoritarianism is the state of being authoritarian or the belief that people with power, especially the State, have the right to control other people's actions.
  • authority figure — a person whose real or apparent authority over others inspires or demands obedience and emulation: Parents, teachers, and police officers are traditional authority figures for children.
  • autobiographical — An autobiographical piece of writing relates to events in the life of the person who has written it.
  • autoethnographic — Using ethnographic techniques to describe one's own life, or events in which one is a participant.
  • autofluorescence — (biology, microscopy) Self-induced fluorescence.
  • automatic camera — a camera in which the lens aperture or the shutter speed or both are automatically adjusted to the prevailing conditions
  • automatic redial — a telephone service feature whereby the last number dialed is automatically called again, either after a specified time or when activated by the user.
  • automatic repeat — a key on the keyboard of a typewriter, computer, etc, which, when depressed continuously, produces the character repeatedly until the key is released
  • automatrix, inc. — (company)   The company which produced CAM-PC. Address: Ballston Spa, NY, USA.
  • autoradiographic — Of or pertaining to an autoradiograph, a radiographic image produced by the decay of a radioactive substance.
  • autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
  • autostereoscopic — Of or pertaining to autostereoscopy.
  • autotransformers — Plural form of autotransformer.
  • autotransfusions — Plural form of autotransfusion.
  • auxiliary police — a part-time reserve attached to a regular police force
  • auxiliary rafter — a rafter reinforcing a principal rafter.
  • average adjuster — a person who calculates average claims, esp for marine insurance
  • azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
  • background check — an investigation into a person's origins and previous history
  • background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
  • background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
  • background paper — a report or other piece of writing that is intended to provide contextual and historical information that will help people understand a particular topic or situation
  • backus-naur form — (language, grammar)   (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of Donald Knuth. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a metasyntax?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see RFC 2234). Consider this BNF for a US postal address: ::= ::= | "." ::= [] | ::= [] ::= "," This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the regexp wild cards such as "*" or "+". EBNF is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the ALGOL 60 report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognised. ABNF is another extension.
  • baluster measure — an antique liquid measure usually made of pewter, having a concave top on a convex base.
  • banana republics — any of the small countries in the tropics, especially in the Western Hemisphere, whose economies are largely dependent on fruit exports, tourism, and foreign investors.
  • bankruptcy court — a section of the United States federal court which specializes in the handling of bankruptcy cases
  • bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
  • barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
  • barbed tributary — a tributary that joins its mainstream in an upstream direction rather than in the more common downstream direction.
  • barium carbonate — a white, poisonous, water-insoluble powder, BaCO 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of rodenticides, paints, and dyes.
  • barium hydroxide — a white poisonous crystalline solid, used in the manufacture of organic compounds and in the preparation of beet sugar. Formula: Ba(OH)2
  • baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
  • bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
  • bashkir republic — a constituent republic of E central Russia, in the S Urals: established as the first Soviet autonomous republic in 1919; rich mineral resources. Capital: Ufa. Pop: 4 012 900 (2002). Area: 143 600 sq km (55 430 sq miles)
  • basic curriculum — in England and Wales, the National Curriculum plus religious education
  • basic vocabulary — the set of lexical items in a language that are most resistant to replacement, referring to the most common and universal elements of human experience, such as parts of the body (foot, eye), universal features of the environment (water, star), common activities (eat, sleep), and the lowest numerals.
  • basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
  • bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
  • bastard daughter — an illegitimate daughter
  • batch production — production of goods in batches, rather than continuously
  • be off your food — If you are off your food, you do not want to eat, usually because you are ill.
  • be out of breath — If you are out of breath, you are breathing very quickly and with difficulty because you have been doing something energetic.
  • beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
  • beauty treatment — the use of some form of treatment to improve someone's beauty such as a facial, manicure or depilation
  • beaux' stratagem — a comedy (1707) by George Farquhar.
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