18-letter words containing a
- aphrodite of melos — a Greek statue of Venus in marble, c200 b.c., found in 1820 on Melos and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- apocryphal gospels — accounts of Christ's life that are not recognized as part of the New Testament
- apostolic delegate — a representative of the pope sent to countries that do not have full or regular diplomatic relations with the Holy See
- appalachian spring — a dance (1944) choreographed by Martha Graham, with musical score by Aaron Copland.
- apparatus criticus — textual notes, list of variant readings, etc, relating to a document, esp in a scholarly edition of a text
- apparent magnitude — magnitude (sense 3)
- apparent solar day — the period of time between two successive passages of the sun's center across the same meridian.
- appellate division — the section of a court that hears appeals, sometimes existing as an intermediate court between a trial court and a court of last resort.
- apple of one's eye — a person or thing that is very precious or much loved
- application server — 1.
A designer's or developer's suite of software that helps programmers isolate the business logic in their programs from the platform-related code. Application servers can handle all of the application logic and connectivity found in client-server applications. Many application servers also offer features such as transaction management, clustering and failover, and load balancing; nearly all offer ODBC support. 2. Production programs run on a mid-sized computer that handle all application operations between browser-based computers and an organisation's back-end business applications or databases. The application server works as a translator, allowing, for example, a customer with a browser to search an online retailer's database for pricing information. 3. The device on which application server software runs. Application Service Providers offer commercial access to such devices. - applied kinematics — kinematics (def 2).
- applied psychology — psychology that is put to practical use
- appraisal drilling — (in the oil industry) drilling carried out once oil or gas has been discovered in order to assess the extent of the field, the reserves, the possible rate of production, and the properties of the oil or gas
- apprentice plumber — a trainee plumber
- appropriation bill — a bill to set apart money for a specific purpose
- arachibutyrophobia — Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth.
- arbiter elegantiae — Gaius [gey-uh s] /ˈgeɪ əs/ (Show IPA), (Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Arbiter Elegantiae") died a.d. 66? Roman satirist.
- arbitration clause — a clause in a contract laying down that disputes between the parties should be settled by arbitration
- arctic archipelago — group of mostly large islands in the Arctic Ocean off the N coast of Canada
- aristotelian logic — the logical theories of Aristotle as developed in the Middle Ages, concerned mainly with syllogistic reasoning: traditional as opposed to modern or symbolic logic
- aristotles-lantern — a complex arrangement of muscles and calcareous teeth and plates forming an eversible organ in most echinoids, functioning in mastication.
- arkansas toothpick — a bowie knife or similar sharp knifelike implement.
- arm's-length price — a price of a transaction agreed in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved
- armed intervention — an official response to a situation which involves the armed forces
- armed to the teeth — Someone who is armed to the teeth is armed with a lot of weapons or with very effective weapons.
- army of occupation — an army that goes into a defeated country to enforce peace terms, keep order, etc.
- arrest of judgment — a stay of proceedings after a verdict, on the grounds of error or possible error
- arrogance of power — presumption on the part of a nation that its power gives it the right to intervene in the affairs of less powerful nations.
- arsenic trisulfide — a yellow or red crystalline substance, As 2 S 3 , occurring in nature as the mineral orpiment, and used as a pigment (king's yellow) and in pyrotechnics.
- artificial gravity — a simulated gravity or sensation of weight established within a spacecraft by means of the craft's rotation, acceleration, or deceleration.
- artificial horizon — an aircraft instrument, using a gyroscope, that indicates the aircraft's attitude in relation to the horizontal
- artificial reality — virtual reality.
- as clear as a bell — If something is as clear as a bell, it is very clear indeed.
- as far as possible — to the greatest possible extent
- as near as damn it — as near as possible; very near
- as sound as a bell — If something is as sound as a bell it is healthy and not damaged in any way.
- as the case may be — according to the circumstances
- asbestos longjohns — (humour) Notional garments donned by Usenet posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit flamage. This is the most common of the asbestos coinages. Also "asbestos underwear", "asbestos overcoat", etc.
- asciibetical order — (jargon, programming) /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a".
- aseptic meningitis — a mild form of meningitis usually caused by one of several viruses, characterized by headache, fever, and neck stiffness.
- asiatic black bear — a bear, Selenarctos thibetanus, of central and E Asia, whose coat is black with a pale V-shaped mark on the chest
- aspherical surface — a lens or mirror surface that does not form part of a sphere and is used to reduce aberrations
- assessment process — a series of steps that constitute a method of assessing students or workers
- assignment problem — (mathematics, algorithm) (Or "linear assignment") Any problem involving minimising the sum of C(a, b) over a set P of pairs (a, b) where a is an element of some set A and b is an element of set B, and C is some function, under constraints such as "each element of A must appear exactly once in P" or similarly for B, or both. For example, the a's could be workers and the b's projects. The problem is "linear" because the "cost function" C() depends only on the particular pairing (a, b) and is independent of all other pairings.
- associate director — a person who is joined with one or more other directors in an enterprise, business, etc, having equal or nearly equal status
- associated company — a company which is largely controlled by its parent company because the latter owns anything up to 50% of the shares
- association cortex — any of the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain connected by numerous nerve fibers to all parts of both cerebral hemispheres and coordinating such higher activities as learning and reasoning.
- associative cortex — the part of the cortex that does not have direct connections to the senses or motor system and is thought to be involved in higher mental processes
- associative memory — content addressable memory
- assortative mating — the reproductive pairing of individuals that have more traits in common than would likely be the case if mating were random (contrasted with disassortative mating).