12-letter words containing w, c, o, a
- out of whack — to strike with a smart, resounding blow or blows.
- packed tower — A packed tower is a tall distillation vessel which uses packing.
- pasch flower — pasqueflower
- peacock worm — feather-duster worm.
- periodic law — the law that the properties of the elements are periodic functions of their atomic numbers.
- phonetic law — a statement of some regular pattern of sound change in a specific language, as Grimm's law or Verner's law.
- plastic flow — deformation of a material that remains rigid under stresses of less than a certain intensity but that behaves under severer stresses approximately as a Newtonian fluid.
- poll watcher — a representative of a political party or of an organization running a candidate who is assigned to the polls on an election day to watch for violations of the laws that regulate voting, campaigning, etc.
- postcardware — Shareware that borders on freeware, in that the author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to real estate "sales" in which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.)
- power factor — (in an electrical circuit) the ratio of the power dissipated to the product of the input volts times amps
- power vacuum — a situation when a government has no identifiable central authority
- ratchet down — If something ratchets down or is ratcheted down, it decreases by a fixed amount or degree, and seems unlikely to increase again.
- rock wallaby — any wallaby of the genus Petrogale, having a banded or striped coat, slender body, and long legs and feet, inhabiting caves and rocky areas in Australia.
- scapegallows — a criminal who escapes death by hanging or the gallows
- school prawn — a common olive-green prawn, Metapenaeus macleayi
- screw around — a metal fastener having a tapered shank with a helical thread, and topped with a slotted head, driven into wood or the like by rotating, especially by means of a screwdriver.
- servicewoman — a woman who is a member of the armed forces of a country.
- 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
- 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.
- snow crystal — a crystal of ice sufficiently heavy to fall from the atmosphere.
- snowshoe cat — a breed of cat with soft short hair, blue eyes, an inverted V-shaped marking on the face, and white feet
- stomach worm — a nematode, Haemonchus contortus, parasitic in the stomach of sheep, cattle, and related animals.
- swagger coat — a woman's pyramid-shaped coat with a full flared back and usually raglan sleeves, first popularized in the 1930s.
- swamp locust — water locust.
- tapioca snow — snow pellets.
- the cold war — the period (1945-91) of cold war between the Soviet Union and its Communist allies and the U.S. and its non-Communist allies
- waffle cloth — honeycomb (def 5a).
- wages policy — a government policy setting wages and wage increases for workers, for example, setting minimum wage requirements
- wainscotings — Plural form of wainscoting.
- wainscotting — paneling or woodwork with which rooms, hallways, etc., are wainscoted.
- waistcoateer — a prostitute
- waistcoating — a fabric for making waistcoats.
- wallcovering — a flexible sheet of sized paper, fabric, plastic, etc., usually laminated and printed with a repeat pattern, for pasting on a wall as decoration and protection.
- wapsipinicon — a river in E Iowa, flowing SE to the Mississippi River. 255 miles (410 km) long.
- warm welcome — friendly or enthusiastic reception
- watch pocket — a small pocket in a garment, as in a vest or trousers, for holding a pocket watch, change, etc. Compare fob1 (def 1).
- watchdogging — a dog kept to guard property.
- water cannon — a truck-mounted hose or pipe that shoots a jet of water through a nozzle at extremely high pressure, used especially in dispersing rioters or demonstrators.
- water closet — an enclosed room or compartment containing a toilet bowl fitted with a mechanism for flushing.
- water clover — a common freshwater fern, Marsilea quadrifolia, of lake edges and quiet ponds, having roots embedded in the bottom, very slender and often tangled stems, and floating, cloverlike leaves composed of four leaflets.
- water coning — Water coning is when flow in a well changes as the oil-water interface forms into a bell shape.
- water cooler — a container for holding drinking water that is cooled and drawn off by a faucet or spigot.
- water locust — a spiny tree, Gleditsia aquatica, of the legume family, native to the southeastern coastal U.S., having pinnate leaves, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped flowers, and long-stalked, thin pods.
- water pocket — a cavity at the foot of a cliff formed by the falling action of an intermittent stream.
- water-cooled — kept from overheating by having water circulated around or through it, as in pipes or a water jacket
- water-locked — enclosed entirely, or almost entirely, by water: a waterlocked nation.
- watercolours — Plural form of watercolour.
- watercourses — Plural form of watercourse.
- wave cyclone — a cyclone that forms on a front and, in maturing, produces an increasingly sharp, wavelike deformation of the front.