15-letter words containing w, a, n
- fundamental law — the organic law of a state, especially its constitution.
- gale-force wind — a wind of force seven to ten on the Beaufort scale or from 45 to 90 kilometres per hour
- gesamtkunstwerk — total art work; an artistic creation, as the music dramas of Richard Wagner, that synthesizes the elements of music, drama, spectacle, dance, etc.
- get a wiggle on — to hurry up
- giant sunflower — a composite plant, Helianthus giganteus, of eastern North America, growing nearly 12 feet (4 meters) high and having very large yellow flower heads.
- giant water bug — any of various aquatic bugs, as of the family Belostomatidae (giant water bug)
- gibson, william — William Gibson
- go on one's way — If you go on your way, you continue with your journey.
- go with a swing — If you say that something is going with a swing, you mean that it is lively and exciting.
- great awakening — the series of religious revivals among Protestants in the American colonies, especially in New England, lasting from about 1725 to 1770.
- greenland whale — an arctic right whale, Balaena mysticetus, that is black with a cream-coloured throat
- gregorian water — a mixture of water, salt, ashes, and wine, blessed and sprinkled over the altar in the consecration of a church.
- griqualand west — a former district in S South Africa, N of the Orange River and W of the Orange Free State: diamonds found 1867.
- half wellington — a loose boot extending to just above the ankle and usually worn under the trousers.
- have (down) pat — to know or have memorized thoroughly
- hawaiian guitar — a six-to-eight-string electric guitar, fretted with a piece of metal or bone to produce a whining, glissando sound, played in a horizontal position usually resting on the performer's knees or on a stand, and much used by country music performers.
- hawaiian pidgin — an English-based creole widely spoken in Hawaii.
- hebrew calendar — the lunisolar calendar used by Jews, as for determining religious holidays, that is reckoned from 3761 b.c. and was established by Hillel II in the 4th century a.d., the calendar year consisting of 353 days (defective year) 354 days (regular year) or 355 days (perfect year or abundant year) and containing 12 months: Tishri, Heshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar, Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, and Elul, with the 29-day intercalary month of Adar Sheni added after Adar seven times in every 19-year cycle in order to adjust the calendar to the solar cycle. The Jewish ecclesiastical year begins with Nisan and the civil year with Tishri.
- horizontal well — A horizontal well is a well which has sections that have been drilled at more than 80 degrees from the vertical in order to penetrate a greater length of the reservoir.
- housewifization — The process by which the division of labor has relegated women into housewives.
- how do you mean — If you say 'How do you mean?' to someone, you are asking them to explain or give more details of what they have just said.
- hump one's swag — (of a tramp) to carry one's belongings from place to place on one's back
- identical twins — one of a pair of twins who develop from a single fertilized ovum and therefore have the same genotype, are of the same sex, and usually resemble each other closely.
- in a family way — pregnant; with child
- in all weathers — If you say that someone does something in all weathers, you mean that they do it regularly whether the weather is good or bad.
- in harness with — in cooperation with
- in the same way — similarly
- indian hawthorn — a southern Chinese evergreen shrub, Raphiolepis indica, of the rose family, having shiny, leathery leaves and pinkish-white flowers in loose clusters.
- irvine dataflow — (language) (Always called "Id") A non-strict, single assignment language and incremental compiler developed by Arvind and Gostelow and used on MIT's Tagged-Token Dataflow Architecture and planned to be used on Motorola's Monsoon. See also Id Nouveau.
- ja well no fine — used to indicate reluctant acceptance
- james rainwater — (Leo) James, 1917–86, U.S. physicist: Nobel prize 1975.
- javelin thrower — a person who throws a javelin
- jewish calendar — the lunisolar calendar used by the Jews, in which time is reckoned from 3761 bc: regarded as the year of the Creation. The months, Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishri, Cheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, and Adar, have either 29 or 30 days. Originally a new month was declared when the new moon was sighted in Jerusalem, but when this became impossible, a complex formula was devised to keep Rosh Chodesh near to the new moon. In addition, to keep the harvest festivals in the right seasons, there is a Metonic cycle of 14 years, in five of which an additional month is added after Shevat. The year according to biblical reckoning begins with Nisan, and the civil year begins with Tishri; the years are numbered from Tishri
- knowledge-based — characterized by the dominance of information services as an area of growth
- label switching — (networking) A routing technique that uses information from existing IP routing protocols to identify IP datagrams with labels and forwards them to a modified switch or router, which then uses the labels to switch the datagrams through the network. Label switching combines the best attributes of data link layer (layer two) switching (as in ATM and Frame Relay) with the best attributes of network layer (layer three) routing (as in IP). Prior to the formation of the MPLS Working Group in 1997, a number of vendors had announced and/or implemented proprietary label switching.
- lady-in-waiting — a lady who is in attendance upon a queen or princess.
- lake washington — a lake in W Washington, forming the E boundary of the city of Seattle: linked by canal with Puget Sound. Length: about 32 km (20 miles). Width: 6 km (4 miles)
- language lawyer — A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-page manual that together imply the answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there". Compare wizard, legal, legalese.
- law of identity — the law that any proposition implies itself.
- law of the mean — the theorem that for a function continuous on a closed interval and differentiable on the corresponding open interval, there is a point in the interval such that the difference in functional values at the endpoints is equal to the derivative evaluated at the particular point and multiplied by the difference in the endpoints.
- law-enforcement — of police, anti-crime
- leeward islands — a group of islands in the Caribbean, in the N Lesser Antilles between Puerto Rico and Martinique
- levant wormseed — the dried, unexpanded flower heads of a wormwood, Artemisia cina (Levant wormseed) or the fruit of certain goosefoots, especially Chenopodium anthelminticum (or C. ambrosioides), the Mexican tea or American wormseed, used as an anthelmintic drug.
- lord-in-waiting — a nobleman in attendance on a British monarch or the Prince of Wales.
- low bandwidth x — (networking) (LBX) An implementation of the X Window System designed to improve performance over ISDN, WAN, and serial lines.
- low-maintenance — requiring little attention or upkeep
- lowland gorilla — the eastern lowland gorilla or western lowland gorilla. See under gorilla.
- maid-in-waiting — an unmarried woman who serves as an attendant to a queen or princess; lady-in-waiting.
- make allowances — to take mitigating circumstances into account in consideration (of)
- man of his 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.