12-letter words containing w, y
- waitangi day — the national day of New Zealand (Feb 6), commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) by Māori chiefs and a representative of the British Government. The treaty provided the basis for the British annexation of New Zealand
- walter mitty — an ordinary, timid person who is given to adventurous and self-aggrandizing daydreams or secret plans as a way of glamorizing a humdrum life.
- washer-dryer — a washing machine and a clothes dryer combined in one unit.
- watchability — detectable; apparent.
- water supply — the supply of purified water available to a community.
- water system — a river and all its branches.
- water turkey — anhinga.
- wave cyclone — a cyclone that forms on a front and, in maturing, produces an increasingly sharp, wavelike deformation of the front.
- wave-and-pay — relating to a payment system that uses RFID technology to allow a customer to pay for goods by passing a card in front of a sensor
- webliography — a list of electronic documents, websites, or other resources available on the World Wide Web, especially those relating to a particular subject: a student's annotated webliography on Shakespeare.
- week by week — each week
- weeny-bopper — a child of 8 to 12 years, esp a girl, who is a keen follower of pop music
- weightlessly — Whilst weightless; without weight.
- wesley clark — (person) One of the designers of the Laboratory Instrument Computer at MIT who subsequently had a quiet hand in many seminal computing events, such as the development of the Internet, the first really good description of the metastability problem in computer logic.
- west babylon — a city on S Long Island, in SE New York.
- west germany — a former republic in central Europe: created in 1949 by the coalescing of the British, French, and U.S. zones of occupied Germany established in 1945. 96,025 sq. mi. (248,706 sq. km). Capital: Bonn.
- whataboutery — (of two communities in conflict) the practice of repeatedly blaming the other side and referring to events from the past
- whimperingly — In a whimpering way.
- whimsicality — Also, whimsicalness. whimsical quality or character.
- whipping boy — a person who is made to bear the blame for another's mistake; scapegoat.
- whiskey jack — gray jay.
- whiskey sour — a cocktail made with whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar.
- whisperingly — In a whispering manner; quietly.
- white bryony — a climbing herbaceous cucurbitaceous plant, Bryonia dioica, of Europe and North Africa, having greenish flowers and red berries
- whittle away — To whittle away something or whittle away at it means to gradually make it smaller, weaker, or less effective.
- whortleberry — the edible black berry of a Eurasian shrub, Vaccinium myrtillus, of the heath family.
- wild parsley — any of several uncultivated plants resembling the parsley in shape and structure.
- willmar city — a city in SW Minnesota.
- winter-hardy — able to survive the effects of cold weather.
- with a … eye — in a … manner
- woburn abbey — a mansion in Woburn in Bedfordshire: originally an abbey; rebuilt in the 17th century for the Dukes of Bedford, altered by Henry Holland in the 18th century; deer park landscaped by Humphrey Repton
- woodburytype — a process using gelatine film exposed to the negative, which is then pressed into lead and processed, or a print of this type
- woodruff key — a key having the form of a nearly semicircular disk fitting into a recess in a shaft.
- woolly aphid — any plant louse of the family Aphididae, characterized by a waxy secretion that appears like a jumbled mass of fine, curly, white cottony or woolly threads, as Eriosoma lanigerum (woolly apple aphid or American blight) and Prociphilus tessellatus (woolly alder aphid)
- woolly pully — a woollen pullover; a warm jumper
- wordsmithery — the craft or skill of a wordsmith
- worldly-wise — wise as to the affairs of this world.
- worshipfully — In a worshipful manner; reverentially.
- władysław ii — original name Jogaila. ?1351–1434, grand duke of Lithuania (1377–1401) and king of Poland (1386–1434). He united Lithuania and Poland and founded the Jagiellon dynasty
- władysław iv — 1595–1648, king of Poland (1632–48)
- yarrow-river — a river in SE Scotland, flowing into the Tweed. 14 miles (23 km) long.
- yellow alert — (in military or civilian defense) the first alert given when enemy aircraft are discovered approaching a military installation, city, coastline, etc. Compare blue alert, red alert, white alert.
- yellow avens — herb bennet.
- yellow belly — Slang. a person who is without courage, fortitude, or nerve; coward.
- yellow birch — a North American birch, Betula alleghaniensis (or B. lutea), having yellowish or silvery gray bark.
- yellow cress — any of various species of cress (Rorippa) that are related to watercress and have yellow flowers. They are not confined to water margins and some are garden weeds
- yellow daisy — the black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta.
- yellow fever — an acute, often fatal, infectious febrile disease of warm climates, caused by an RNA virus transmitted by a mosquito, especially Aedes aegypti, and characterized by liver damage and jaundice.
- yellow light — a yellow traffic light, usually preceding a signal halting traffic in a particular direction.
- yellow metal — a type of brass having about 60 per cent copper and 40 per cent zinc