16-letter words containing a, b, n
- disagreeableness — (uncountable) The state or quality of being disagreeable.
- discombobulating — Present participle of discombobulate.
- discombobulation — to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
- discriminability — The condition of being discriminable.
- discussion board — a website or section of a website that is used for public discussion of a specific topic and on which users can submit or read messages: You should post your questions on a parenting message board and get support from other parents.
- disembarrassment — Freedom or relief from impediment or perplexity.
- disequilibration — to put out of equilibrium; unbalance: A period of high inflation could disequilibrate the monetary system.
- disestablishment — to deprive of the character of being established; cancel; abolish.
- dishonorableness — The property of being dishonorable.
- disreputableness — The state or quality of being disreputable or disgraceful; disreputability.
- distributionally — In a distributional manner.
- division algebra — a linear algebra in which each element of the vector space has a multiplicative inverse.
- double monastery — a religious community of both men and women who live in separate establishments under the same superior and who worship in a common church.
- double occupancy — a type of travel accommodation, as in a hotel, for two persons sharing the same room: The rate is $35 per person, double occupancy, or $65, single occupancy.
- double pneumonia — pneumonia affecting both lungs.
- double-breasting — the practice of employing nonunion workers, especially in a separate division, to supplement the work of higher-paid union workers.
- draw the longbow — to exaggerate in telling something
- dublin bay prawn — a large prawn usually used in a dish of scampi
- eastern kingbird — any of several American tyrant flycatchers of the genus Tyrannus, especially T. tyrannus (eastern kingbird) of North America, known for their pugnacious disposition toward predators.
- eastern whipbird — an Australian whipbird, Psophodes olivaceus
- eclipsing binary — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- economic embargo — a legal stoppage of commerce, usually taken by one nation or group of nations to harm the economy of another nation or group, often to force a political change
- el camino bignum — (humour) /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". In the Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar "real" types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" - but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See bignum).
- elburz mountains — a mountain range in N Iran, parallel to the SW and S shores of the Caspian Sea. Highest peak: Mount Demavend, 5671 m (18 606 ft)
- electric blanket — electrically-heated bedcover
- embarkation card — an official document that allows travellers to leave a country by boarding a ship or plane
- emotional labour — work that requires good interpersonal skills
- endocannabinoids — Plural form of endocannabinoid.
- erymanthian boar — a wild boar that ravaged the district around Mount Erymanthus: captured by Hercules as his fourth labour
- exhibition match — a sports match which is not part of a competition but instead serves the function of demonstrating the skills of the players
- expansion bottle — a tank collecting coolant from a radiator while an engine is heated, and from which the coolant returns to the radiator when the engine cools
- experience table — an actuarial table, esp a mortality table based on past statistics
- family balancing — the choosing of the sex of a future child on the basis of how many children of each sex a family already has
- fancy dress ball — a ball at which the guests wear fancy dress
- fantasy baseball — imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
- fantasy football — imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
- fashion business — the business dealing with style in clothes, cosmetics, behaviour, etc, esp the latest or most admired style
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- fibonacci number — a number in the Fibonacci sequence, each of which is the sum of the previous two
- fibonacci series — a sequence of integers in which each integer (Fibonacci number) after the second is the sum of the two preceding integers; specif., the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . .
- first balkan war — Balkan War (def 1).
- fisherman's bend — a knot made by taking a round turn on the object to which the rope is to be fastened, passing the end of the rope around the standing part and under the round turn, and securing the end.
- flabbergastation — (colloquial) Bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.
- flabbergastingly — Surprisingly, astonishingly or amazingly.
- flat-bed scanner — a type of optical scanner having a flat, stationary surface on which a page is scanned by a moving head.
- flying ambulance — an aircraft used to take sick or injured people to hospital
- forbid the banns — to raise an objection to a marriage announced in this way
- forced vibration — Forced vibration is a type of vibration in which a force is repeatedly applied to a mechanical system.
- fortin barometer — an adjustable cistern barometer, the most common of those employing mercury.
- freeboard length — the length of a vessel, measured on the summer load line from the fore side of the stem to some part of the stern, usually the after side of the rudderpost.