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15-letter words containing s, w, a, r

  • sunflower state — Kansas (used as a nickname).
  • swallow-tanager — a tropical American bird, Tersina viridis, related to the true tanagers but with longer, swallowlike wings.
  • sweep the board — (in gambling) to win all the cards or money
  • sweetheart deal — any agreement in which a public body offers unduly favourable terms to a private company or individual
  • swiss army code — (programming, humour)   Code for an application that is suffering from feature creep. Swiss Army Code does many things, but does none of them well.
  • sword swallower — performer who puts swords in throat
  • sword-swallower — a performer who simulates the swallowing of swords
  • take one's word — a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning. Words are composed of one or more morphemes and are either the smallest units susceptible of independent use or consist of two or three such units combined under certain linking conditions, as with the loss of primary accent that distinguishes black·bird· from black· bird·. Words are usually separated by spaces in writing, and are distinguished phonologically, as by accent, in many languages.
  • test the waters — assess or evaluate sth
  • thankworthiness — the state or quality of being thankworthy or deserving thanks
  • the cesarewitch — a long-distance horserace run each year in October at Newmarket racecourse
  • the lower ranks — people who have a low rank in a military organization
  • thorndike's law — the principle that all learnt behaviour is regulated by rewards and punishments, proposed by Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949), US psychologist
  • towers of hanoi — (games)   A classic computer science problem, invented by Edouard Lucas in 1883, often used as an example of recursion. "In the great temple at Benares, says he, beneath the dome which marks the centre of the world, rests a brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles, each a cubit high and as thick as the body of a bee. On one of these needles, at the creation, God placed sixty-four discs of pure gold, the largest disc resting on the brass plate, and the others getting smaller and smaller up to the top one. This is the Tower of Bramah. Day and night unceasingly the priests transfer the discs from one diamond needle to another according to the fixed and immutable laws of Bramah, which require that the priest on duty must not move more than one disc at a time and that he must place this disc on a needle so that there is no smaller disc below it. When the sixty-four discs shall have been thus transferred from the needle on which at the creation God placed them to one of the other needles, tower, temple, and Brahmins alike will crumble into dust, and with a thunderclap the world will vanish." The recursive solution is: Solve for n-1 discs recursively, then move the remaining largest disc to the free needle. Note that there is also a non-recursive solution: On odd-numbered moves, move the smallest sized disk clockwise. On even-numbered moves, make the single other move which is possible.
  • training wheels — a pair of small wheels attached one on each side of the rear wheel of a bicycle for stability while one is learning to ride.
  • transfer window — the period during the year in which a football club can transfer players from other teams into their own
  • transverse wave — a wave in which the direction of displacement is perpendicular to the direction of propagation, as a surface wave of water.
  • troubled waters — a confused or chaotic state of affairs: The situation was terrible, but like many politicians he was attracted by troubled waters.
  • twist one's arm — to combine, as two or more strands or threads, by winding together; intertwine.
  • two-star petrol — leaded petrol that has a low octane number; inferior leaded petrol
  • unanswerability — the quality of not being answerable or contestable
  • unseaworthiness — constructed, outfitted, manned, and in all respects fitted for a voyage at sea.
  • upperclasswoman — An upperclasswoman is a junior or senior student in a high school, college, or university.
  • w.h. richardson — Henry Handel (Henrietta Richardson Robertson) 1870–1946, Australian novelist.
  • waddesdon manor — a mansion near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire: built (1880–89) in the French style for the Rothschild family: noted for its furnishings and collections of porcelain and paintings
  • wallpaper music — music that is pleasant but not interesting, so people do not pay much attention to it
  • wallpaper paste — an adhesive used for attaching wallpaper to a surface
  • walpurgis night — (especially in medieval German folklore) the evening preceding the feast day of St. Walpurgis, when witches congregated, especially on the Brocken.
  • walrus mustache — a thick, shaggy mustache hanging down loosely at both ends.
  • warmheartedness — The quality of being warmhearted.
  • warrantableness — Quality of being warrantable.
  • wassermann test — a diagnostic test for syphilis using the fixation of a complement by the serum of a syphilitic individual.
  • water-based mud — Water-based mud is a type of drilling mud consisting mainly of water, which has additives to modify it and make it more effective.
  • water-resistant — resisting though not entirely preventing the penetration of water.
  • waterford glass — fine cut or gilded glass made in Waterford, Ireland, having a slight blue cast due to the presence of cobalt.
  • weapons carrier — a light truck for transporting weapons or munitions in the field.
  • weather station — an installation equipped and used for meteorological observation.
  • wechsler scales — a group of intelligence tests, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) later revised (WAIS-R) the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) later revised (WISC-R) the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) and the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale, no longer used, all of which emphasize performance and verbal skills and give separate scores for subtests in vocabulary, arithmetic, memory span, assembly of objects, and other abilities.
  • wee small hours — the hours just after midnight
  • welfare statism — the belief in or practices of a welfare state.
  • well-advertised — to announce or praise (a product, service, etc.) in some public medium of communication in order to induce people to buy or use it: to advertise a new brand of toothpaste.
  • welsbach burner — a type of gaslight in which a mantle containing thorium and cerium compounds becomes incandescent when heated by a gas flame
  • wentworth scale — a scale for specifying the sizes (diameters) of sedimentary particles, ranging from clay particles (less than 1⁄256 mm) to boulders (over 256 mm)
  • wernicke's area — a portion of the left posterior temporal lobe of the brain, involved in the ability to understand words.
  • west carrollton — a town in W Ohio.
  • west hartlepool — a former borough, now part of Hartlepool, in Cleveland County, in NE England, at the mouth of the Tees.
  • western tanager — a tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, of western North America, the male of which is black, yellow, and orange-red.
  • what's-her-name — a girl or woman whose name is unknown, temporarily forgotten, or deliberately overlooked
  • wheelchair user — a person who is unable to walk through injury, illness, etc and relies on a wheelchair to move around
  • whiplash injury — the lash of a whip.
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