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20-letter words containing a, b, n, o, r

  • bone mineral density — a measurement of the amount of calcium and other minerals in a segment of bone, a higher mineral content indicating a higher bone density and strength, used to detect osteoporosis or monitor its treatment.
  • born-again christian — person: evangelical
  • boulogne billancourt — a suburb of Paris, in N France.
  • boulogne-billancourt — an industrial suburb of SW Paris. Pop: 106 367 (1999)
  • bouvier des flandres — any of a breed of large, strong dog with a rough, wiry coat and pointed, erect ears
  • brachiocephalic vein — either of two major veins, formed by the merger of the subclavian and internal jugular veins, that drain blood from the head and arms.
  • breakerless ignition — electronic ignition.
  • breakfast television — Breakfast television refers to television programmes which are broadcast in the morning at the time when most people are having breakfast.
  • bring home the bacon — If you bring home the bacon, you achieve what you needed to achieve.
  • brittle bone disease — bone disorder
  • broadcast journalism — journalism as practiced in radio and television.
  • broadcasting station — a television or radio station
  • broaden o's/the mind — If an experience broadens your mind, it makes you more willing to accept other people's beliefs and customs.
  • brown lung (disease) — a chronic disease of the lungs caused by inhalation of fine textile fibers, esp. cotton; byssinosis
  • buck's horn plantain — a Eurasian plant, Plantago coronopus, having leaves resembling a buck's horn: family Plantaginaceae
  • buoyancy compensator — an inflatable vest used to control one's buoyancy underwater or to rest at the surface, usually having a connecting hose for inflation or deflation by mouth and a CO 2 cartridge for rapid, emergency inflation.
  • bureau of the census — the division of the Department of Commerce that gathers, tabulates, and correlates census statistics.
  • by their own account — If you say that something concerning a particular person is true by his or her own account, you mean that you believe it because that person has said it is true.
  • by/from all accounts — If you say that something is true by all accounts or from all accounts, you believe it is true because other people say so.
  • calderon de la barca — Pedro (ˈpeðro). 1600–81, Spanish dramatist, whose best-known work is La Vida es Sueño. He also wrote autos sacramentales, outdoor plays for the feast of Corpus Christi, 76 of which survive
  • california barracuda — a small, slender barracuda, Sphyraena argentea, of coastal seas from Alaska to Baja California, valued as a food fish.
  • cantabrian mountains — a mountain chain along the N coast of Spain, consisting of a series of high ridges that rise over 2400 m (8000 ft): rich in minerals (esp coal and iron)
  • carbocyclic compound — any of a group of organic chemical compounds in which all the atoms composing the ring are carbon atoms, as benzene or cyclopropane.
  • carbohydrate loading — the practice of eating high amounts of carbohydrates, sometimes after a period of low carbohydrate intake, for several days immediately before competing in an athletic event, especially a marathon, in order to store glycogen in the body, thereby providing greater reserves of energy.
  • carbon sequestration — the prevention of greenhouse gas build-up in the earth's atmosphere by methods such as planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide or pumping carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs
  • carbon tetrachloride — a colourless volatile nonflammable sparingly soluble liquid made from chlorine and carbon disulphide; tetrachloromethane. It is used as a solvent, cleaning fluid, and insecticide. Formula: CCl4
  • carry all before one — to win unanimous support or approval for oneself
  • case based reasoning — (artificial intelligence)   (CBR) A technique for problem solving which looks for previous examples which are similar to the current problem. This is useful where heuristic knowledge is not available. There are many situations where experts are not happy to be questioned about their knowledge by people who want to write the knowledge in rules, for use in expert systems. In most of these situations, the natural way for an expert to describe his or her knowledge is through examples, stories or cases (which are all basically the same thing). Such an expert will teach trainees about the expertise by apprenticeship, i.e. by giving examples and by asking the trainees to remember them, copy them and adapt them in solving new problems if they describe situations that are similar to the new problems. CBR aims to exploit such knowledge. Some key research areas are efficient indexing, how to define "similarity" between cases and how to use temporal information.
  • central bedfordshire — a unitary authority of S central England. Pop: 252 100 (2007 est). Area: 712 sq km (275 sq miles)
  • change-speed gearbox — A change-speed gearbox is a set of movable or constant gears which allows the speed ratio between input and output shafts to be changed either manually or automatically.
  • checkbook journalism — the practice of paying for a news story or an interview, or for exclusive broadcasting or publishing rights.
  • checkerboard pattern — checked pattern that looks like a draughtboard
  • chromatic aberration — a defect in a lens system in which different wavelengths of light are focused at different distances because they are refracted through different angles. It produces a blurred image with coloured fringes
  • conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
  • constant de rebecque — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
  • controlled substance — a drug regulated by the Federal Controlled Substances Acts, including opiates, depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens
  • cytosine arabinoside — cytarabine.
  • database transaction — (database)   A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
  • diabetic retinopathy — a disorder of the blood vessels of the retina occurring as a complication of poorly controlled diabetes mellitus and often leading to blindness.
  • diamondback terrapin — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
  • distribution channel — trade: retailer
  • double fertilization — the fertilization process characteristic of flowering plants, in which one sperm cell of a pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell while a second fuses with two polar nuclei to produce a triploid body that gives rise to the endosperm.
  • drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
  • duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
  • electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
  • elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
  • embryo vitrification — a method of in vitro fertilization in which the embryo is exposed to a vitreous solution and frozen before being thawed and implanted into the uterus
  • endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
  • environment variable — (programming, operating system)   A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
  • equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
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