15-letter words containing a, b, n, o, r
- bristol fashion — clean and neat, with newly painted and scrubbed surfaces, brass polished, etc
- britneyfication — the effect on clothes and fashions of following the revealing styles favoured by the US pop singer Britney Spears (born 1981)
- brompheniramine — a substance, C 16 H 19 BrN 2 , used as an antihistamine in the management of various allergies, as hay fever.
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- bronze diabetes — hemochromatosis.
- bronzed grackle — the western subspecies of the American bird, the common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula versicolor, having bronzy, iridescent plumage.
- brother-in-arms — a fellow soldier or comrade in a shared struggle
- 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.
- 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.
- buffalo currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes odoratum, of the central U.S., having showy, drooping clusters of fragrant yellow flowers and edible black fruit.
- bulimia nervosa — a disorder characterized by compulsive overeating followed by vomiting: sometimes associated with anxiety about gaining weight
- bullnose header — bull header (def 1).
- bullnose-header — Also called bullnose header. a brick having one of the edges across its width rounded for laying as a header in a sill or the like.
- bureau of mines — a division of the Department of the Interior, created in 1910, that studies the nation's mineral resources and inspects mines.
- button mangrove — a tropical tree, Conocarpus erectus, having small, reddish, conelike fruits and bark used in tanning.
- calydonian boar — a savage boar sent by Artemis to destroy Calydon, a city in Aetolia, because its king had neglected to sacrifice to her. It was killed by Meleager, the king's son
- campaign ribbon — a distinctively colored ribbon, either on a small, narrow bar or in the form of a strip, representing a military campaign participated in by the wearer.
- cannonball tree — a South American tree, Couroupita guianensis, bearing round, woody-husked fruit whose shells are used to make containers and utensils.
- carbon fixation — the process by which plants assimilate carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form metabolically active compounds
- carbon monoxide — Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas that is produced especially by the engines of vehicles.
- carry one's bat — (of an opening batsman) to reach the end of an innings without being dismissed
- cartesian doubt — willful suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain: used as a method of deriving, by elimination of such uncertainties, axioms upon which to base theories.
- cartier-bresson — Henri (ɑ̃ri). 1908–2004, French photographer
- catchment board — a public body concerned with the conservation and organization of water supply from a catchment area
- centrifugal box — a revolving chamber, used in the spinning of manufactured filaments, in which the plastic fibers, subjected to centrifugal force, are slightly twisted and emerge in the form of yarn wound into the shape of a hollow cylinder.
- chamber concert — a concert of chamber music
- chamber counsel — a counsel who advises in private and does not plead in court
- chandler wobble — a slight, irregular nutation of the earth's rotational axis with a period of c. 428 days
- charcoal burner — (formerly) a person whose work was making charcoal by burning
- charcoal-burner — a device that burns charcoal, as a stove or brazier.
- chocolate brown — a dark brown
- chromosome band — any of the transverse bands that appear on a chromosome after staining. The banding pattern is unique to each type of chromosome, allowing characterization
- cinderella book — (publication) "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation", by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also book titles.
- climb indicator — an instrument that shows the rate of ascent or descent of an aircraft, operating on a differential pressure principle.
- combat neurosis — battle fatigue.
- combinatorially — in a combinatorial manner
- comfort blanket — a blanket that a young child is very attached to
- comfortableness — (of clothing, furniture, etc.) producing or affording physical comfort, support, or ease: a comfortable chair; comfortable shoes.
- commercial bank — a bank primarily concerned with accepting demand deposits, used as checking accounts
- configurability — The property of being configurable.
- conformableness — The state or quality of being conformable.
- contact breaker — a switching device used in the distributor of an internal-combustion engine which controls the timing of the spark that ignites the spark plug
- contract bridge — the most common variety of bridge, in which the declarer receives points counting towards game and rubber only for tricks he bids as well as makes, any overtricks receiving bonus points
- contractability — (of a body or substance) the ability to become smaller, narrower, shorter, etc
- contractibility — contractability
- controllability — to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command: The car is difficult to control at high speeds. That zone is controlled by enemy troops.
- controller bias — In a control loop, the controller bias is a constant amount added to or subtracted from the action that a controller would normally take with a particular gain.
- coordinate bond — a type of covalent chemical bond in which both the shared electrons are provided by one of the atoms
- corona borealis — a small compact constellation in the N hemisphere lying between Boötes and Hercules