16-letter words containing w, e, n
- chinese wisteria — a high-climbing Chinese vine, Wisteria sinensis, of the legume family, having hanging clusters of fragrant, bluish-violet flowers and long, velvety pods.
- chinese wood oil — tung oil.
- cog in the wheel — small part of a large system
- combining weight — the atomic weight of an atom or radical divided by its valence.
- common knowledge — something widely or generally known
- commonwealth day — the anniversary of Queen Victoria's birth, May 24, celebrated (now on the second Monday in March) as a holiday in many parts of the Commonwealth
- community worker — someone who works for the benefit of a community, esp for a social service agency
- compression wave — a shock wave that compresses the medium through which it is transmitted.
- computer network — network
- conservation law — any law stating that some quantity or property remains constant during and after an interaction or process, as conservation of charge or conservation of linear momentum.
- conservative jew — a Jew who adheres for the most part to the principles and practices of traditional Judaism with the reservation that, taking into account contemporary conditions, certain modifications or rejections are permissible.
- consumption weed — groundsel tree.
- continuous waves — radio waves generated as a continuous train of oscillations having a constant frequency and amplitude
- counselor-at-law — a lawyer, esp one who conducts cases in court; attorney
- counterclockwise — If something is moving counterclockwise, it is moving in the opposite direction to the direction in which the hands of a clock move.
- cowichan sweater — a heavy sweater of grey, unbleached wool with distinctive designs that were originally black-and-white but are now sometimes coloured: knitted originally by Cowichan Indians in British Columbia
- creative writing — Creative writing is writing such as novels, stories, poems, and plays.
- creditworthiness — having a satisfactory credit rating.
- cromwell current — an equatorial Pacific current, flowing eastward from the Hawaiian Islands to the Galápagos Islands
- crowd one's luck — to take unnecessary risks in an already favorable situation
- crown prosecutor — In Britain, a crown prosecutor is a lawyer who works for the state and who prosecutes people who are accused of crimes.
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- curtain-twitcher — a person who likes to watch unobserved what other people are doing
- cut down to size — to reduce the prestige or importance of
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- darwinian theory — Darwin's theory of evolution, which holds that all species of plants and animals developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of slight variations in successive generations, and that natural selection determines which forms will survive
- data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
- de morgan's laws — (in formal logic and set theory) the principles that conjunction and disjunction, or union and intersection, are dual. Thus the negation of P & Q is equivalent to not-P or not-Q
- dead man walking — a condemned man walking from his prison cell to a place of execution
- declare war (on) — to make a formal declaration of being at war (with)
- developing world — Third World: poor countries
- development well — (in the oil industry) a well drilled for the production of oil or gas from a field already proven by appraisal drilling to be suitable for exploitation
- dew-point spread — the degrees of difference between the air temperature and the dew point
- do business with — trade or deal with
- down at the heel — with the heels of one's shoes in need of repair
- down memory lane — If you say that someone is taking a walk or trip down memory lane, you mean that they are talking, writing, or thinking about something that happened to them a long time ago.
- down one's alley — a passage, as through a continuous row of houses, permitting access from the street to backyards, garages, etc.
- down to the wire — a slender, stringlike piece or filament of relatively rigid or flexible metal, usually circular in section, manufactured in a great variety of diameters and metals depending on its application.
- downy woodpecker — a small, North American woodpecker, Picoides pubescens, having black and white plumage.
- draw and quarter — to disembowel and dismember (a person) after hanging
- draw the longbow — to exaggerate in telling something
- dree one's weird — to endure one's fate
- drop (down) dead — If you say that a person or animal dropped dead or dropped down dead, you mean that they died very suddenly and unexpectedly.
- dutch new guinea — a former name of Irian Jaya.
- dyed-in-the-wool — through and through; complete: a dyed-in-the-wool reformer.
- dyer's greenweed — woadwaxen.
- dyer's-greenweed — woadwaxen.
- eastern whipbird — an Australian whipbird, Psophodes olivaceus
- ebony spleenwort — a fern, Asplenium platyneuron, of woody areas of North America, having ladderlike leaves and shiny, dark brown stems.
- eighteen-wheeler — a tractor-trailer having eighteen wheels