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16-letter words that end in y

  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
  • behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
  • bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
  • 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.
  • 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-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
  • blocked currency — a currency that is not freely convertible because of exchange controls imposed on it
  • blue huckleberry — tangleberry.
  • blue-ribbon jury — a jury composed of persons having more than ordinary education and presumably exceptional intelligence and perceptiveness, selected by the court on the motion of plaintiff or defendant to try cases of unusual complexity or importance.
  • board of inquiry — a group set up to inquire into accidents, etc
  • bog whortleberry — a plant, Vaccinium uliginosum, of mountain regions, having pink flowers and black fruits
  • 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
  • boutique brewery — microbrewery.
  • bright and early — very early in the morning
  • 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.
  • buckthorn family — the plant family Rhamnaceae, characterized by shrubs and trees having alternate, simple leaves, clusters of small flowers, and fruit in the form of a drupe or capsule, and including the buckthorn, cascara, and New Jersey tea.
  • buckwheat family — the plant family Polygonaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, vines, shrubs, and trees having stems with swollen joints, simple leaves, small, petalless flowers, and fruit in the form of an achene, and including the buckwheat, dock, knotweed, rhubarb, sea grape, and smartweed.
  • building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
  • bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
  • bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
  • burrowing blenny — graveldiver.
  • bush huckleberry — a huckleberry shrub, Gaylussacia dumosa, having sticky, hairy twigs, white or pink flowers, and tasteless but edible black fruit.
  • busman's holiday — If you have a holiday, but spend it doing something similar to your usual work, you can refer to it as a busman's holiday.
  • buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
  • cabbage root fly — a dipterous fly, Erioischia brassicae, whose larvae feed on the roots and stems of cabbages and other brassicas: family Muscidae (houseflies, etc)
  • california poppy — a papaveraceous plant, Eschscholtzia californica, of the Pacific coast of North America, having yellow or orange flowers and finely divided bluish-green leaves
  • calligraphically — In a calligraphic manner: using calligraphy.
  • calorimetrically — In a calorimetric manner.
  • canyon de chelly — a canyon in NE Arizona, in the Navajo reservation: site contains prehistoric cliff dwellings.
  • capitalistically — In a capitalistic manner.
  • cartographically — the production of maps, including construction of projections, design, compilation, drafting, and reproduction.
  • case sensitivity — (text)   Whether a text matching operation distinguishes upper-case (capital) letters from lower case (is "case sensitive") or not ("case insensitive"). Case in file names should be preserved (for readability) but ignored when matching (so the user doesn't have to get it right). MS-DOS does not preserve case in file names, Unix preserves case and matches are case sensitive. Any decent text editor will allow the user to specify whether or not text searches should be case sensitive. Case sensitivity is also relevant in programming (most programming languages distiguish between case in the names of identifiers), and addressing (Internet domain names are case insensitive but RFC 822 local mailbox names are case sensitive). Case insensitive operations are sometimes said to "fold case", from the idea of folding the character code table so that upper and lower case letters coincide. The alternative "smash case" is more likely to be used by someone who considers this behaviour a misfeature or in cases where one case is actually permanently converted to the other. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create".
  • cash on delivery — If you pay for goods cash on delivery, you pay for them in cash when they are delivered. The abbreviation C.O.D. is also used.
  • cashless society — a society in which purchases of goods or services are made by credit card or electronic funds transferral rather than with cash or checks.
  • catachrestically — In a catachrestic way.
  • catastrophically — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
  • central tendency — the tendency of the values of a random variable to cluster around the mean, median, and mode
  • character comedy — comedy, or a comedy, in which the main source of humour is in the character of the people represented in it
  • chauvinistically — a person who is aggressively and blindly patriotic, especially one devoted to military glory.
  • chemoreceptivity — The ability of a sense organ to respond to a chemical stimulus.
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