14-letter words containing a, l, n
- auditory canal — the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum.
- augean stables — the stables, not cleaned for 30 years, where King Augeas kept 3000 oxen. Hercules diverted the River Alpheus through them and cleaned them in a day
- auger-electron — a nonradiative process in which an atom in an excited state undergoes a transition to a lower state by the emission of a bound electron (Auger electron) rather than by the emission of an x-ray.
- augmentatively — In an augmentative fashion.
- auld lang syne — Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish song about friendship that is traditionally sung as clocks strike midnight on New Year's Eve.
- austrian blind — a window blind consisting of rows of vertically gathered fabric that may be drawn up to form a series of ruches
- autoenrollment — Automatic enrollment (especially of security certificates in a computer system).
- autoregulation — the continual automatic adjustment or self-regulation of a biochemical, physiological, or ecological system to maintain a stable state.
- autotransplant — autograft.
- auxiliary note — a nonharmonic note occurring between two harmonic notes
- auxiliary tone — a melodic ornamental tone following a principal tone by a step above or below and returning to the principal tone; embellishment.
- avalanche lily — a wildflower (Erythronium montanum) of the lily family, native to the mountain meadows of Washington and Oregon and blooming in June among the melting snowbanks
- avalanche wind — the wind that is created in front of an avalanche.
- avoidance play — a play by the declarer designed to prevent a particular opponent from taking the lead.
- axial skeleton — the bones that together comprise the skull and the vertebral column
- babbling brook — a cook
- babbling error — (networking) An Ethernet node attempting to transmit more than 1518 data bytes - the largest allowed Ethernet packet. This is why the Maximum Transmission Unit for IP traffic on Ethernet is 1500.
- back clearance — runout (def 1b).
- back-clearance — Machinery. the gradual termination of a groove on the body of an object not ending there, as the upper termination of a flute in a twist drill. Also called back clearance. a space in a depressed area of an object into which a machine tool or grinding wheel may safely enter at the end of a pass or operation.
- back-pedalling — a retreat from or a retraction of a previously held view
- backbone cabal — (networking) A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the Great Renaming and reined in the chaos of Usenet during most of the 1980s. The cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal cat-fight.
- backbreakingly — In a backbreaking manner.
- backflap hinge — Building Trades. flap (def 20a).
- backing vocals — a vocal accompaniment for a pop singer
- bactrian camel — a two-humped camel, Camelus bactrianus, used as a beast of burden in the cold deserts of central Asia
- balance bridge — a bascule bridge
- balance spring — hairspring.
- balance weight — a weight used in machines to counterbalance a part, as of a crankshaft
- balanced valve — a valve designed so that pressure-induced forces from the fluid being controlled oppose one another so that resistance to opening and closing the valve is negligible.
- ball and chain — (formerly) a heavy iron ball attached to a chain and fastened to a prisoner
- ball indicator — a flight instrument that measures the angle of roll about an aircraft's horizontal axis, thereby indicating whether or not the aircraft is skidding or slipping.
- ball lightning — a luminous electrically charged ball occasionally seen during electrical storms
- ball-and-chain — a heavy iron ball fastened by a chain to a prisoner's leg.
- ballistic wind — a single wind vector that would have the same net effect on the trajectory of a projectile as the varying winds encountered in flight.
- ballon d'essai — a project or policy put forward experimentally to gauge reactions to it
- balloon sleeve — a sleeve fitting tightly from wrist to elbow and becoming fully rounded from elbow to shoulder
- ballot rigging — Ballot rigging is the act of illegally changing the result of an election by producing a false record of the number of votes.
- ballroom dance — a social dance, popular since the beginning of the 20th century, in conventional rhythms, such as the foxtrot and the quickstep
- balsaminaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Balsaminaceae, a family of flowering plants, including balsam and touch-me-not, that have irregular flowers and explosive capsules
- balto-slavonic — a hypothetical subfamily of Indo-European languages consisting of Baltic and Slavonic. It is now generally believed that similarities between them result from geographical proximity rather than any special relationship
- banach algebra — (mathematics) An algebra in which the vector space is a Banach space.
- banana problem — (programming, humour) From the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell "banana", but I don't know when to stop". Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare fencepost error). One may say "there is a banana problem" of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also creeping elegance, creeping featuritis).
- bandar lampung — a port in Indonesia, in S Sumatra on the Sunda Strait; formed by merging the cities of Tanjungkarang and Telukbetung, and sometimes still referred to as Tanjungkarang-Telukbetung. Pop: 742 749 (2000)
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
- baranof island — an island off SE Alaska, in the western part of the Alexander Archipelago. Area: 4162 sq km (1607 sq miles)
- barnacle goose — a N European goose, Branta leucopsis, that has a black-and-white head and body and grey wings
- barong tagalog — (in the Philippines) a man's long-sleeved formal overblouse, made of fine, sheer fabric, often embroidered.
- barrier island — a long island, parallel to the coastline, formed from a ridge of sand (barrier beach) thrown up by the waves, that serves the shore as a protective barrier against tidal waves, storms, etc.
- basal ganglion — any of several masses of gray matter in each cerebral hemisphere.