13-letter words containing w, a
- maxwell demon — a hypothetical agent or device of arbitrarily small mass that is considered to admit or block selectively the passage of individual molecules from one compartment to another according to their speed, constituting a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
- meadow beauty — any of several North American plants of the genus Rhexia, especially R. mariana or R. virginica, having showy rose-pink flowers with eight prominent bright yellow stamens.
- meadow fescue — a European fescue, Festuca pratensis, of the grass family, grown for pasture in North America.
- measuringworm — the larva of any geometrid moth, which progresses by bringing the rear end of the body forward and then advancing the front end.
- megawatt hour — a unit of energy equal to the work done by a power of a million watts in one hour
- melvin conway — (person) An early proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE and (probably) formulated Conway's Law.
- mend o's ways — If someone who has been behaving badly mends their ways, they begin to behave well.
- mendel's laws — law of segregation.
- microwaveable — Alternative spelling of microwavable.
- might as well — have no reason not to
- milne-edwards — Henri [ahn-ree] /ɑ̃ˈri/ (Show IPA), 1800–85, French zoologist.
- mineral water — water containing dissolved mineral salts or gases, especially such water considered healthful to drink.
- mineral wells — a city in N central Texas.
- model railway — a model of a small-scale railway system, often with toy moving trains
- morning watch — the watch from 4 a.m. until 8 a.m.
- moseley's law — the observed law that the square root of the frequencies of lines in atomic x-ray spectra depends linearly on the atomic number of the emitting atom.
- mosquito hawk — nighthawk (def 1).
- mother-in-law — the mother of one's husband or wife.
- mountain view — city in WC Calif., near San Jose: pop. 71,000
- mouthwatering — very appetizing in appearance, aroma, or description: a mouth-watering dessert.
- mulligan stew — a stew made of odd bits of meat and vegetables, esp. as prepared by hobos
- multimegawatt — producing or involving several million watts of power
- murder weapon — the weapon that was used in a murder
- naples yellow — a yellow pigment, used by artists; lead antimonate
- narrow squeak — an escape only just managed
- narrow-bodied — (of a jet aircraft) having a narrow fuselage and a single aisle with seats on either side.
- narrow-fisted — tight-fisted.
- narrow-minded — having or showing a prejudiced mind, as persons or opinions; biased.
- narrowcasting — Present participle of narrowcast.
- negative glow — the luminous region between the Crookes dark space and the Faraday dark space in a vacuum tube, occurring when the pressure is low.
- neo-darwinism — the theory of evolution as expounded by later students of Charles Darwin, especially Weismann, holding that natural selection accounts for evolution and denying the inheritance of acquired characters.
- nervewracking — Alternative form of nerve-wracking.
- network layer — (networking) (communications subnet layer) The third lowest layer in the OSI seven layer model. The network layer determines routing of packets of data from sender to receiver via the data link layer and is used by the transport layer. The most common network layer protocol is IP.
- new age music — a type of gentle melodic popular music originating in the US in the late 1980s, which takes in elements of jazz, folk, and classical music and is played largely on synthesizers and acoustic instruments
- new amsterdam — a Dutch colony in North America (1613–64), comprising the area along the Hudson River and the lower Delaware River. By 1669 all of the land comprising this colony was taken over by England. Capital: New Amsterdam.
- new australia — the colony on socialist principles founded by William Lane in Paraguay in 1893
- new ball game — a new or changed situation: Once we're out of debt it'll be a whole new ball game.
- new braunfels — a city in S Texas, near San Antonio.
- new caledonia — an island in the S Pacific, about 800 miles (1290 km) E of Australia. 6224 sq. mi. (16,120 sq. km).
- new englander — an area in the NE United States, including the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
- new fairfield — a town in SW Connecticut.
- new hampshire — a state in the NE United States. 9304 sq. mi. (24,100 sq. km). Capital: Concord. Abbreviation: NH (for use with zip code), N.H.
- new jerusalem — heaven regarded as the prototype of the earthly Jerusalem; the heavenly city
- new stone age — the Neolithic period.
- new testament — the collection of the books of the Bible that were produced by the early Christian church, comprising the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
- new to a game — If you are new to a particular game, you have not done a particular activity or been in a particular situation before.
- new zealander — a country in the S Pacific, SE of Australia, consisting of North Island, South Island, and adjacent small islands: a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. 103,416 sq. mi. (267,845 sq. km). Capital: Wellington.
- new-fashioned — lately come into fashion; made in a new style, fashion, etc.
- newbery award — an annual award for the most distinguished book for juveniles.
- newgroup wars — /n[y]oo'groop worz/ [Usenet] The salvos of dueling "newgroup" and "rmgroup" messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether a newsgroup should be created net-wide, or (even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times, especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humour; e.g. the spinoff of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork from alt.tv.muppets in early 1990, or any number of specialised abuse groups named after particularly notorious flamers, e.g. alt.weemba.