16-letter words containing s, y
- atomic physicist — a scientist specializing in atomic physics
- auditory aphasia — aphasia in which there is no comprehension of spoken words; word deafness.
- auditory vesicle — the pouch that is formed by the invagination of an ectodermal placode and that develops into the internal ear.
- aulnay-sous-bois — a town in N central France, a suburb NE of Paris.
- aung san suu kyi — born 1945, Burmese politician; cofounder (1988) and general secretary (1988–91 and from 1995) of the National League for Democracy: Nobel peace prize 1991; released (2010) from a lengthy house arrest; elected to the Burmese House of Representatives in 2012
- autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
- aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
- away from sb/sth — If something is away from a person or place, it is at a distance from that person or place.
- axis of symmetry — Mathematics. a straight line for which every point on a given curve has corresponding to it another point such that the line connecting the two points is bisected by the given line.
- 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.
- bastard mahogany — an Australian tree, Eucalyptus botryoides, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and furrowed bark.
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- 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
- bertillon system — a system formerly in use for identifying persons, esp criminals, by means of a detailed record of physical characteristics
- biliary calculus — an abnormal stonelike mass, usually of cholesterol, formed in the gallbladder or bile passages.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- black-eyed susan — any of several North American plants of the genus Rudbeckia, esp R. hirta, having flower heads of orange-yellow rays and brown-black centres: family Asteraceae (composites)
- bloomsbury group — a group of writers, artists, and intellectuals living and working in and around Bloomsbury in London from about 1907 to 1930. Influenced by the philosophy of G. E. Moore, they included Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, and John Maynard Keynes
- bob's your uncle — everything is or will turn out all right
- bodily functions — physical processes such as urination and defecation
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
- brown-eyed susan — a composite plant, Rudbeckia triloba, of the southeastern U.S., having a single flower with yellow rays darkening to an orange orbrown at the base and a brownish-black disk.
- buckley's chance — no chance at all
- building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
- bullying tactics — the use of intimidation to gain one's objective
- bury st. edmunds — a city in W Suffolk, in E England: medieval shrine.
- bush honeysuckle — any of several shrubs of the genus Diervilla, of eastern North America, having clusters of yellowish flowers.
- bush huckleberry — a huckleberry shrub, Gaylussacia dumosa, having sticky, hairy twigs, white or pink flowers, and tasteless but edible black fruit.
- business analyst — (job) A person who analyses the operations of a department or functional unit to develop a general systems solution to the problem. The solution will typically involve a combination of manual and automated processes. The business analyst can provide insights into an operation for an information systems analyst.
- busman's holiday — If you have a holiday, but spend it doing something similar to your usual work, you can refer to it as a busman's holiday.
- butterfly scheme — A parallel version of Scheme for the BBN Butterfly computer.
- butterfly stroke — a swimming stroke in which the arms are plunged forward together in large circular movements
- bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
- canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
- capitalistically — In a capitalistic manner.
- carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- caryophyllaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Caryophyllaceae, a family of flowering plants including the pink, carnation, sweet william, and chickweed
- case sensitivity — (text) Whether a text matching operation distinguishes upper-case (capital) letters from lower case (is "case sensitive") or not ("case insensitive"). Case in file names should be preserved (for readability) but ignored when matching (so the user doesn't have to get it right). MS-DOS does not preserve case in file names, Unix preserves case and matches are case sensitive. Any decent text editor will allow the user to specify whether or not text searches should be case sensitive. Case sensitivity is also relevant in programming (most programming languages distiguish between case in the names of identifiers), and addressing (Internet domain names are case insensitive but RFC 822 local mailbox names are case sensitive). Case insensitive operations are sometimes said to "fold case", from the idea of folding the character code table so that upper and lower case letters coincide. The alternative "smash case" is more likely to be used by someone who considers this behaviour a misfeature or in cases where one case is actually permanently converted to the other. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create".
- cash on delivery — If you pay for goods cash on delivery, you pay for them in cash when they are delivered. The abbreviation C.O.D. is also used.
- cashless society — a society in which purchases of goods or services are made by credit card or electronic funds transferral rather than with cash or checks.
- catachrestically — In a catachrestic way.