16-letter words containing u, l, n
- vinylidene group — the bivalent group C 2 H 2 , derived from ethylene.
- visual interface — (tool, text) (vi) /V-I/, /vi:/, *never* /siks/ A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for an early BSD release. vi became the de facto standard Unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favourite outside of MIT until the rise of Emacs after about 1984. It tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even some Emacs fans resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of Emacs). See holy wars.
- visual magnitude — Astronomy. magnitude (def 5a).
- visual-magnitude — size; extent; dimensions: to determine the magnitude of an angle.
- vitruvian scroll — a scroll forming a stylized wave pattern.
- vocabulary entry — (in dictionaries) a word, phrase, abbreviation, symbol, affix, name, etc., listed with its definition or explanation in alphabetical order or listed for identification after the word from which it is derived or to which it is related.
- voluntary helper — a person who aids or assists in a specified function of one's own accord and without compulsion or promise of remuneration
- voluntary muscle — muscle whose action is normally controlled by an individual's will; mainly skeletal muscle, composed of parallel bundles of striated, multinucleate fibers.
- voluntary school — a school that promotes specific religious beliefs and which is funded by a local education authority but was not established by the authority
- voluntary sector — the part of the economy that consists of non-profit-making organizations, as opposed to the public and private sectors
- voluntary worker — a person who serves or acts in a specified function of their own accord and without compulsion or promise of remuneration
- volunteer bureau — an agency that matches up people wishing to do voluntary work with appropriate voluntary organizations
- vulcanized fiber — a leatherlike substance made by compression of layers of paper or cloth that have been treated with acids or zinc chloride, used chiefly for electric insulation.
- well-constructed — to build or form by putting together parts; frame; devise.
- well-functioning — the kind of action or activity proper to a person, thing, or institution; the purpose for which something is designed or exists; role.
- wheel animalcule — a rotifer.
- wheel of fortune — wheel (def 9).
- wheelchair-bound — unable to walk through injury, illness, etc and relying on a wheelchair to move around
- wild honeysuckle — pinxter flower.
- wish fulfillment — gratification of desires.
- wishful thinking — interpretation of facts, actions, words, etc., as one would like them to be rather than as they really are; imagining as actual what is not.
- woodland caribou — a variety of caribou inhabiting the bogs and forests of eastern Canada, having large, palmate antlers.
- woodland culture — a long pre-Columbian tradition characterized by the corded pottery of a hunting and later agricultural people of the eastern U.S. noted for the construction of burial mounds and other structures and dating from c1000 b.c. to a.d. 1700.
- world bank group — the collective name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Finance Corporation, and the International Development Association, whose headquarters are all in Washington
- wrongful trading — the act of allowing a company to continue trading when its insolvency is inevitable
- yellow underwing — any of several species of noctuid moths (Noctua and Anarta species), the hind wings of which are yellow with a black bar
- yellowfin (tuna) — a tuna (Thunnus albacares) with yellow fins and a yellow stripe on each side, important as a game and food fish and found worldwide in warm seas
- zollner illusion — a spatial illusion in which parallel lines intersected by short oblique lines are perceived as converging or diverging.