15-letter words containing w
- biot-savart law — the law that the magnetic induction near a long, straight conductor, as wire, varies inversely as the distance from the conductor and directly as the intensity of the current in the conductor.
- bird's eye view — You say that you have a bird's eye view of a place when you are looking down at it from a great height, so that you can see a long way but everything looks very small.
- bittersweetness — the quality of being bittersweet
- black and white — In a black and white photograph or film, everything is shown in black, white, and grey.
- black-and-white — displaying only black and white tones; without color, as a picture or chart: a black-and-white photograph.
- blackwall hitch — a knot for hooking tackle to the end of a rope, holding fast when pulled but otherwise loose
- blasting powder — a form of gunpowder made with sodium nitrate instead of saltpeter, used chiefly for blasting rock, ore, etc.
- blended whiskey — whiskey that is a blend of straight whiskey and neutral spirits or of two or more straight whiskeys
- blow one's cool — (of the wind or air) to be in motion.
- blow one's cork — to lose one's temper; become enraged
- blow one's horn — to boast about oneself; brag
- blow one's mind — (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
- blue wood aster — a composite plant, Aster cordifolius, of North America, having heart-shaped leaves and pale-blue flowers.
- borrower's card — a card issued by a library to individuals or organizations entitling them or their representatives to borrow materials.
- bowel complaint — bowel disease or condition
- bowstring truss — a structural truss consisting of a curved top chord meeting a bottom chord at each end.
- brand awareness — the extent to which consumers are aware of a particular product or service
- brave new world — If someone refers to a brave new world, they are talking about a situation or system that has recently been created and that people think will be successful and fair.
- breakdown cover — insurance cover against breakdowns in a vehicle
- bronzing powder — the powder used in bronzing, consisting of alloys of bronze or brass
- brown-and-serve — requiring only a brief period of browning, as in an oven, before being ready to serve: brown-and-serve rolls.
- brown-tail moth — a white moth, Nygmia phaerrhoea, having a brown tuft at the end of the abdomen, the larvae of which feed on the foliage of various shade and fruit trees.
- brownfield site — a disused site envisaged for redevelopment
- brownian motion — the irregular motion of small particles suspended in a liquid or a gas, caused by the bombardment of the particles by molecules of the medium: first observed by Robert Brown in 1827.
- buffer overflow — (programming) What happens when you try to store more data in a buffer than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun and firehose syndrome), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that crunches a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in lossage as input from a long line overflows the buffer and overwrites data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full. See also spam, overrun screw.
- building worker — a labourer, bricklayer, etc who works in the construction industry
- butterfly wedge — a wooden fastening in the form of a double dovetail for joining two boards at their edges.
- buys-ballot law — the law stating that if one stands with one's back to the wind, in the Northern Hemisphere the atmospheric pressure will be lower on one's left and in the Southern Hemisphere it will be lower on one's right: descriptive of the relationship of horizontal winds to atmospheric pressure.
- caldecott award — an annual award in the U.S. for an outstanding illustrated juvenile book.
- call forwarding — a telephone service that allows incoming calls to be transferred automatically to another number or extension
- campaign worker — a person who carries out duties for a political candidate or party, esp before an election
- canadian whisky — a blended whisky made in Canada from rye and other grains
- cardinal flower — a campanulaceous plant, Lobelia cardinalis of E North America, that has brilliant scarlet, pink, or white flowers
- cardinal vowels — a set of theoretical vowel sounds, based on the shape of the mouth needed to articulate them, that can be used to classify the vowel sounds of any speaker in any language
- casement-window — a window sash opening on hinges that are generally attached to the upright side of its frame.
- catharine wheel — Catherine wheel.
- catherine wheel — A Catherine wheel is a firework in the shape of a circle which spins round and round.
- cauliflower ear — permanent swelling and distortion of the external ear as the result of ruptures of the blood vessels: usually caused by blows received in boxing
- cauliflowerette — a single floret from the head of a cauliflower.
- cellar dwellers — the team at the bottom of a sports league
- cetti's warbler — a reddish-brown Eurasian warbler, Cettia cetti, with a distinctive song
- chandler wobble — a slight, irregular nutation of the earth's rotational axis with a period of c. 428 days
- chewing tobacco — tobacco, in the form of a plug, usually flavored, for chewing rather than smoking.
- chewings fescue — a hardy, fine-leaved variety of fescue, Festuca rubra commutata, grown in the U.S. and New Zealand as a lawn grass.
- child endowment — a social security payment for dependent children
- chimney swallow — another name for common swallow
- chinless wonder — a person, esp an upper-class one, lacking strength of character
- chocolate brown — a dark brown
- christcross-row — the alphabet.
- citrus whitefly — See under whitefly.