12-letter words containing s, w
- blue-sky law — a state law regulating the trading of securities: intended to protect investors from fraud
- boiled sweet — Boiled sweets are hard sweets that are made from boiled sugar.
- bond washing — a series of deals in bonds made with the intention of avoiding taxation
- bottlewasher — a person or machine that washes bottles.
- bow thruster — a propeller located in a ship's bow to provide added maneuverability, as when docking.
- brainwashing — the process of brainwashing.
- braunschweig — Brunswick
- breast wheel — a waterwheel onto which the propelling water is fed at the height of a horizontal axle.
- british warm — an army officer's short thick overcoat
- brooks's law — (programming) "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
- brown-nosing — If you accuse someone of brown-nosing, you are saying in a rather offensive way that they are agreeing with someone important in order to get their support.
- browser skin — a changeable decorative background for a browser
- brush flower — a flower or inflorescence with numerous long stamens, usually pollinated by birds or bats
- bushwhacking — to make one's way through woods by cutting at undergrowth, branches, etc.
- by wholesale — at wholesale
- by-a-whisker — whiskers, a beard.
- can of worms — a complicated problem
- cape sparrow — a sparrow, Passer melanurus, very common in southern Africa: family Ploceidae
- caraway seed — the pungent aromatic one-seeded fruit of this plant, used in cooking and in medicine
- carriageways — Plural form of carriageway.
- cashew apple — the soft, swollen, pear-shaped stalk of the cashew tree, to which a cashew nut is attached: used in preserves and wine.
- cassel brown — Vandyke brown.
- cauliflowers — Plural form of cauliflower.
- charles drew — Charles Richard, 1904–50, U.S. physician: developer of blood-bank technique.
- charles' law — the principle that all gases expand equally for the same rise of temperature if they are held at constant pressure: also that the pressures of all gases increase equally for the same rise of temperature if they are held at constant volume. The law is now known to be only true for ideal gases
- cheese straw — a long thin cheese-flavoured strip of pastry
- chickasawhay — a river in SE Mississippi, flowing S to the Pascagoula River. 210 miles (338 km) long.
- chimneysweep — Alternative form of chimney sweep.
- chinese wall — a notional barrier between the parts of a business, esp between the market makers and brokers of a stock-exchange business, across which no information should pass to the detriment of clients
- chowderheads — Plural form of chowderhead.
- circular saw — A circular saw is a round metal disk with a sharp edge which is used for cutting wood and other materials.
- claw setting — a jewellery setting with clawlike prongs
- clos network — (networking) A type of network topology that can connect N inputs to N outputs with less that N^2 crosspoint switches.
- clownishness — The state of being clownish.
- co-ownership — the fact or state of being one of the joint owners of something
- cock sparrow — a male sparrow
- collingswood — a city in SW New Jersey.
- collywobbles — an upset stomach
- common shrew — a small mouse-like long-snouted mammal, Sorex araneus, of the family Soricidae: order Insectivora (insectivores)
- common swift — Apus apus, a bird with long narrow wings which spends most of the time on the wing
- contrariwise — from a contrasting point of view; on the other hand
- conway's law — (project, humour) The rule (presumably formulated by Melvin Conway) that the organisation of software and the organisation of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".
- coomaraswamy — Ananda (Kentish). 1877–1947, Ceylonese art historian and interpreter of Indian culture to the West
- cop it sweet — to accept a penalty without complaint
- corn whiskey — a whisky made from maize
- cornishwoman — a woman who is a native or inhabitant of Cornwall
- cotton waste — refuse cotton yarn, esp when used as a cleaning material
- cowardliness — lacking courage; contemptibly timid.
- cowboy boots — Cowboy boots are high, leather boots, similar to those worn by cowboys.
- cross swords — to argue or fight