12-letter words containing w, a
- sewage works — a place where chemicals are used to clean sewage so that it can then be allowed to go into rivers, etc or used to make manure
- sewing table — a worktable for holding sewing materials, often supplied with a bag or pouch for needlework.
- shadow bands — slow-moving waves of light and dark observed to move across light-coloured surfaces on the earth just before and after totality in a solar eclipse. They are thought to originate from the effects of irregular atmospheric refraction
- shadow dance — a dance in which shadows of the dancers are cast on a screen.
- shadow price — the calculated price of a good or service for which no market price exists
- shadowgraphy — the production of a shadowgraph
- sharp-witted — having or showing mental acuity; intellectually discerning; acute.
- shawl collar — a rolled collar and lapel in one piece that curves from the back of the neck down to the front closure of a single-breasted or double-breasted garment.
- shawl tongue — kiltie (def 3).
- shirtwaister — a tailored blouse or shirt worn by women.
- shooting war — open conflict between hostile nations involving direct military engagements.
- shop steward — commerce: union rep
- show the way — guide
- shower stall — an individual compartment or self-contained unit, having a single shower and accommodating one person.
- siamese twin — (not in technical use) conjoined twin.
- signal tower — a tower from which railway signals are controlled or displayed
- sir lawrence — Sir Lawrence Alma-, Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence.
- skeeter hawk — mosquito hawk.
- skeleton law — a framework or basic outline of law or rule
- sleepwalking — an act of sleepwalking; somnambulation.
- sloop of war — (formerly) a sailing or steam naval vessel having cannons on only one deck.
- slow-release — sustained-release.
- slumber wear — nightclothes
- small wonder — (I am) hardly surprised (that)
- smart growth — People such as architects and environmentalists use smart growth to refer to the construction of new buildings and roads within a town or city so that they are close to people's workplaces and mass transit systems and so that open spaces are not built on.
- snow crystal — a crystal of ice sufficiently heavy to fall from the atmosphere.
- snow leopard — a long-haired, leopardlike feline, Panthera (Uncia) uncia, of mountain ranges of central Asia, having a relatively small head and a thick, creamy-gray coat with rosette spots: an endangered species.
- snowboarding — a board for gliding on snow, resembling a wide ski, to which both feet are secured and that one rides in an upright position.
- snowshoe cat — a breed of cat with soft short hair, blue eyes, an inverted V-shaped marking on the face, and white feet
- software bus — A support environment for heterogeneous distributed processing, such as the ANSA Testbench.
- solway firth — an arm of the Irish Sea between SW Scotland and NW England. 38 miles (61 km) long.
- song sparrow — a small emberizine songbird, Melospiza melodia, common in North America.
- space writer — a journalist or copywriter paid according to a space rate. Also called space man. Compare stringer (def 6).
- sparrow hawk — a small, short-winged European hawk, Accipiter nisus, that preys on smaller birds.
- sparrowgrass — asparagus.
- sponged ware — spongeware.
- spring water — water from natural underground source
- square-jawed — having a regular, approximately rectangular jaw
- squared away — a rectangle having all four sides of equal length.
- squaw valley — valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, E Calif., near Lake Tahoe: a ski resort
- st. lawrence — D(avid) H(erbert) 1885–1930, English novelist.
- st. matthews — a town in N Kentucky.
- stand a show — to have a chance, esp. a remote one
- stanisław ii — surnamed Poniatowski. 1732–98, the last king of Poland (1764–95), during whose reign Poland was repeatedly invaded and partitioned (1772, 1791, 1795) by its neighbours: abdicated
- star network — a circuit with three or more branches all of which have one common terminal.
- state flower — a flower chosen as an official symbol of a U.S. state.
- state of war — a condition marked by armed conflict between or among states, existing whether or not war has been declared formally by any of the belligerents.
- static water — water collected and stored in reservoirs, tanks, etc., as for urban use.
- stefan's law — the principle that the energy radiated per second by unit area of a black body at thermodynamic temperature T is directly proportional to T4. The constant of proportionality is the Stefan constant, equal to 5.670400 × 10–8 Wm–2 K–4
- stellar wind — the radial outflow of ionized gas from a star.