15-letter words containing w, a
- james rainwater — (Leo) James, 1917–86, U.S. physicist: Nobel prize 1975.
- javelin thrower — a person who throws a javelin
- jayhawker state — Kansas (used as a nickname).
- 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
- judicial review — the power of a court to adjudicate the constitutionality of the laws of a government or the acts of a government official.
- keep faith with — If you keep faith with someone you have made a promise to or something you believe in, you continue to support them even when it is difficult to do so.
- kidasa software — (company) A company which develops project management software for Microsoft Windows.
- kirchhoff's law — the law that the algebraic sum of the currents flowing toward any point in an electric network is zero.
- 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's bedstraw — a Eurasian rubiaceous plant, Galium verum, with clusters of small yellow flowers
- 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 averages — a statistical principle formulated by Jakob Bernoulli to show a more or less predictable ratio between the number of random trials of an event and its occurrences.
- 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
- leadwort family — the plant family Plumbaginaceae, characterized by shrubs and herbaceous plants of seacoasts and semiarid regions, having basal or alternate leaves, spikelike clusters of tubular flowers, and dry, one-seeded fruit, and including leadwort, sea lavender, statice, and thrift.
- leeward islands — a group of islands in the Caribbean, in the N Lesser Antilles between Puerto Rico and Martinique
- legacy software — legacy system
- 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.
- level two cache — secondary cache
- look forward to — to turn one's eyes toward something or in some direction in order to see: He looked toward the western horizon and saw the returning planes.
- lord-in-waiting — a nobleman in attendance on a British monarch or the Prince of Wales.
- low archipelago — a group of French islands in the S Pacific. 332 sq. mi. (860 sq. km).
- low bandwidth x — (networking) (LBX) An implementation of the X Window System designed to improve performance over ISDN, WAN, and serial lines.
- low earth orbit — (communications) (LEO) The kind of orbit used by communications satellites that will offer high bandwidth for video on demand, television, and Internet communications. A satellite in LEO, in contrast to one in a geostationary orbit, is not in a fixed position relative to the Earth's surface so several satellites are required to provide continuous service.
- low pass filter — (electronics, graphics) A filter that attenuates high frequency components of a signal. In image processing, a low pass filter might be used to remove noise from an image.
- low-level waste — waste material contaminated by traces of radioactivity that can be disposed of in steel drums in concrete-lined trenches but not (since 1983) in the sea
- low-maintenance — requiring little attention or upkeep
- low-pass filter — a filter that transmits all frequencies below a specified value, substantially attenuating frequencies above this value
- lower east side — a section in the borough of Manhattan, New York: noted for its immigrant culture.
- lower slobbovia — any place considered to be remote, poor, or unenlightened.
- lowland gorilla — the eastern lowland gorilla or western lowland gorilla. See under gorilla.
- lutzow-holm bay — an inlet of the Indian Ocean on the coast of Antarctica between Queen Maud Land and Enderby Land.
- mad cow disease — BSE: bovine spongiform encephalopathy
- maid-in-waiting — an unmarried woman who serves as an attendant to a queen or princess; lady-in-waiting.
- make a hit with — to make a favourable impression on
- make allowances — to take mitigating circumstances into account in consideration (of)
- make sb welcome — If you make someone welcome or make them feel welcome, you make them feel happy and accepted in a new place.
- 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.
- man-o'-war bird — frigate bird.
- man-of-war bird — frigate bird.
- man-of-war fish — a small, tropical fish, Nomeus gronovii, that lives among the tentacles of the Portuguese man-of-war.
- manx shearwater — a European oceanic bird, Puffinus puffinus, with long slender wings and black-and-white plumage: family Procellariidae (shearwaters)
- marigold window — wheel window.
- meadow mushroom — any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels, etc.
- meadow nematode — any of numerous parasitic nematodes of the genus Pratylenchus that infest and destroy the roots of plants.
- meals on wheels — a program, usually one supported or subsidized by a charitable, social, or government agency, for delivering hot meals regularly to elderly, disabled, or convalescing persons who are housebound and cannot cook for themselves.