16-letter words containing y, a
- aulnay-sous-bois — a town in N central France, a suburb NE of Paris.
- aung san suu kyi — born 1945, Burmese politician; cofounder (1988) and general secretary (1988–91 and from 1995) of the National League for Democracy: Nobel peace prize 1991; released (2010) from a lengthy house arrest; elected to the Burmese House of Representatives in 2012
- authority figure — a person whose real or apparent authority over others inspires or demands obedience and emulation: Parents, teachers, and police officers are traditional authority figures for children.
- autodidactically — a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person.
- autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
- auxiliary police — a part-time reserve attached to a regular police force
- auxiliary rafter — a rafter reinforcing a principal rafter.
- aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
- away from sb/sth — If something is away from a person or place, it is at a distance from that person or place.
- axis of symmetry — Mathematics. a straight line for which every point on a given curve has corresponding to it another point such that the line connecting the two points is bisected by the given line.
- babylonian exile — the exile of the Jews, deported by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylonia in 597 b.c. and permitted to return by Cyrus in 538 b.c.
- baltimore canyon — a submarine valley cut into the continental shelf and slope seaward of Chesapeake Bay.
- bankruptcy court — a section of the United States federal court which specializes in the handling of bankruptcy cases
- bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
- barbed tributary — a tributary that joins its mainstream in an upstream direction rather than in the more common downstream direction.
- barclay de tolly — Prince Mikhail (mixaˈil). 1761–1818, Russian field marshal: commander in chief against Napoleon in 1812
- barium hydroxide — a white poisonous crystalline solid, used in the manufacture of organic compounds and in the preparation of beet sugar. Formula: Ba(OH)2
- basic vocabulary — the set of lexical items in a language that are most resistant to replacement, referring to the most common and universal elements of human experience, such as parts of the body (foot, eye), universal features of the environment (water, star), common activities (eat, sleep), and the lowest numerals.
- bastard mahogany — an Australian tree, Eucalyptus botryoides, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and furrowed bark.
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
- batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
- battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- beauty treatment — the use of some form of treatment to improve someone's beauty such as a facial, manicure or depilation
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- biliary calculus — an abnormal stonelike mass, usually of cholesterol, formed in the gallbladder or bile passages.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
- binuclear family — a social unit composed of an extended family, usually the children and subsequent spouses of divorced parents.
- biocompatibility — the capability of coexistence with living tissues or organisms without causing harm: Artificial joint adhesives must have biocompatibility with bone and muscle.
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- birthwort family — the plant family Aristolochiaceae, typified by mostly tropical woody vines and herbaceous plants, having alternate, heart-shaped leaves and flowers lacking true petals but having three petallike sepals, and including the birthwort, Dutchman's-pipe, and wild ginger.
- black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
- black-eyed susan — any of several North American plants of the genus Rudbeckia, esp R. hirta, having flower heads of orange-yellow rays and brown-black centres: family Asteraceae (composites)
- black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
- board of inquiry — a group set up to inquire into accidents, etc
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- brandy alexander — an Alexander cocktail made with brandy
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
- broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.