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19-letter words containing a, b, e, c

  • checks and balances — competition and mutual restraint among the various branches of government
  • chlorobromide paper — a relatively fast printing paper coated with an emulsion of silver chloride and silver bromide.
  • cobalt violet light — a pigment used in painting consisting mainly of arsenate of cobalt, characterized chiefly by its violet color, permanence, and poisonous properties.
  • cobaltous hydroxide — a rose-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Co 2 O 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the preparation of cobalt salts and in the manufacture of paint and varnish driers.
  • collective behavior — the spontaneous, unstructured, and temporary behavior of a group of people in response to the same event, situation, etc.
  • combination therapy — a therapy that combines two or more drugs, or two or more treatments
  • connecticut warbler — a North American wood warbler, Oporornis agilis, olive-green above with a gray head and throat and yellow below.
  • convergent boundary — a major geologic discontinuity or suture marking the juncture of lithospheric plates that have been joined by plate tectonics.
  • coordination number — the number of coordinated species surrounding the central atom in a complex or crystal
  • corrosive sublimate — mercuric chloride
  • creeping bent grass — a grass, Agrostis stolonifera, grown as a pasture grass in Europe and North America: roots readily from the stem
  • cuboidal epithelium — epithelium consisting of one or more layers of cells of cuboid or polyhedral shape.
  • cudgel one's brains — to think hard about a problem
  • current liabilities — business liabilities maturing within a year
  • deathbed confession — a confession that somebody makes just before he or she dies, usually relating to some long concealed crime or secret
  • detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
  • developable surface — a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without stretching or compressing any part of it, as a circular cone.
  • devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
  • differential backup — (operating system)   A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • double-helical gear — herringbone gear.
  • dutchman's-breeches — a plant, Dicentra cucullaria, of the fumitory family, having long clusters of pale-yellow, two-spurred flowers.
  • effervescent tablet — Effervescent tablets break down quickly when they are dropped into water or another liquid.
  • electro-shock baton — a baton used as a weapon to pass an electric current through part of the body
  • electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
  • emotional blackmail — a way of persuading someone to do something they do not want to do by making them feel guilty about it
  • enabling technology — technology that enables the user to perform a task or to improve his or her overall performance: e.g. the internet
  • essence of bergamot — a fragrant essential oil from the fruit rind of this plant, used in perfumery and some teas (including Earl Grey)
  • exhibitionistically — In an exhibitionistic manner.
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gigabits per second — (unit)   (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
  • giraldus cambrensis — literary name of Gerald de Barri. ?1146–?1223, Welsh chronicler and churchman, noted for his accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales
  • goldbach conjecture — an unproved theorem that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.
  • great crested grebe — a large Old World grebe, Podiceps cristatus, having black, earlike tufts of feathers projecting backward from the top of the head.
  • handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
  • hang in the balance — to fasten or attach (a thing) so that it is supported only from above or at a point near its own top; suspend.
  • have a bone to pick — to have grounds for a quarrel
  • heptachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twenty-four isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing seven chlorine atoms.
  • high-bush cranberry — cranberry bush
  • honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
  • hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
  • hydroxybenzoic acid — Hydroxybenzoic acid is the active ingredient in a number of drugs, for example, aspirin. Hydroxybenzoic acid is also used as a preservative.
  • hyperbolic cosecant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of hyperbolic sine
  • in the catbird seat — If you say that someone is in the catbird seat, you think that their situation is very good.
  • incommensurableness — (rare) Incommensurability.
  • incomplete abortion — a miscarriage in which some fetal or placental tissue remains in the uterus.
  • interchangeableness — Quality of being interchangeable.
  • internal-combustion — of or relating to an internal-combustion engine.
  • intervertebral disc — any of the cartilaginous discs between individual vertebrae, acting as shock absorbers
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