13-letter words containing w
- aster yellows — a dwarfing and yellowing of asters and various other plants, caused by a mycoplasma transmitted by a leafhopper.
- at peace with — If you are at peace with yourself or at peace with the world, you feel calm and contented, and you have no emotional conflicts within yourself or with other people.
- atomic weapon — a weapon in which energy is provided by nuclear fission
- atomic weight — the weight of one atom of an element expressed in atomic mass units: it is the average weight of all the isotopes of the element
- autorickshaws — Plural form of autorickshaw.
- award-winning — An award-winning person or thing has won an award, especially an important or valuable one.
- awe-inspiring — If you describe someone or something as awe-inspiring, you are emphasizing that you think that they are remarkable and amazing, although sometimes rather frightening.
- awning window — a window frame having one or more sashes hinged at the top and swinging outward.
- back walkover — Racing. a walking or trotting over the course by a contestant who is the only starter.
- backward roll — a gymnastic roll that is performed with the feet going first and the rest of the body and the head following
- backwardation — the difference between the spot price for a commodity, including rent and interest, and the forward price
- bag of waters — a fluid-filled membranous sac in the pregnant uterus that encloses and cushions the fetus, normally breaking at or just before the time of birth; the amnion.
- bakewell tart — an open tart having a pastry base and a layer of jam and filled with almond-flavoured sponge cake
- baking powder — Baking powder is an ingredient used in cake making. It causes cakes to rise when they are in the oven.
- balance wheel — a wheel oscillating against the hairspring of a timepiece, thereby regulating its beat
- bankrupt worm — a roundworm (genus Trichostrongylus) that is an intestinal parasite of birds and mammals, especially devastating to young livestock.
- bantamweights — Plural form of bantamweight.
- barium yellow — a yellow, crystalline compound, BaCrO 4 , used as a pigment (barium yellow)
- bartholomew i — (Dimitrios Archontonis) born 1940, Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church since 1991.
- basket flower — a composite plant, Centaurea americana, of central U.S. to Mexico, having raylike heads of tubular rose-colored flowers, each surrounded by a whorl of bracts making the flower head appear as if it is set in a basket.
- bassenthwaite — a lake in NW England, in Cumbria near Keswick. Length: 6 km (4 miles)
- baton twirler — someone who twirls a baton, esp a drum major or majorette
- battered wife — See under battered woman syndrome.
- be news to sb — If you say that something is news to you, you mean that you did not previously know what you have just been told, especially when you are surprised or annoyed about it.
- be wild about — If you are wild about someone or something, you like them very much.
- be witness to — If you are witness to something, you see it happen.
- beached whale — large sea mammal stranded on shore
- bearing sword — a large sword carried for its owner by a squire or servant because of its size.
- beer-swilling — in the habit of drinking a lot of beer
- beetle-browed — having bushy or overhanging eyebrows
- bench warrant — a warrant issued by a judge or court directing that an offender be apprehended
- benjamin west — Benjamin, 1738–1820, U.S. painter, in England after 1763.
- between times — at intervals, as between other events or actions
- betweenwhiles — betweentimes.
- bewick's swan — a white Old World swan, Cygnus bewickii, having a black bill with a small yellow base
- bewilderingly — extremely confusing: a bewildering schedule of events.
- big brown bat — any of several small to medium-sized common bats of the genera Myotis and Eptesicus, found worldwide in caves, trees, and buildings, including M. lucifugus (little brown bat) and E. fuscus (big brown bat) a widespread North American species.
- big gray wall — (jargon) What faces a VMS user searching for documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the addition of layered products such as compilers, databases, multi-vendor networking, and programming tools. Recent (since VMS version 5) DEC documentation comes with grey binders; under VMS version 4 the binders were orange and under version 3 they were blue. Often contracted to "Gray Wall".
- binary weapon — a chemical weapon consisting of a projectile containing two substances separately that mix to produce a lethal agent when the projectile is fired
- binding screw — a screw used to secure one thing to another
- bird-watching — Bird-watching is the activity of watching and studying wild birds in their natural surroundings.
- bishop's weed — goutweed.
- bishop's-weed — goutweed.
- bit twiddling — 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see tune) in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code becomes incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small modification to a program, especially for some pointless goal. 3. bit bashing, especially used for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back to a known state.
- bittersweetly — in a bittersweet manner
- bladder wrack — any of various brown algae (genera Ascophyllum and Fucus), having a flattened body and conspicuous air bladders
- blaenau gwent — a county borough of SE Wales, created in 1996 from NW Gwent. Administrative centre: Ebbw Vale. Pop: 68 900 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
- blanketflower — a hardy flowering plant, Gaillardia aristata, that grows in the US
- blow a gasket — to burst out in anger
- blow an eprom — /bloh *n ee'prom/ (Or "blast", "burn") To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM) that preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard) even though the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.