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18-letter words containing a, b, o, r

  • bottom dead centre — the position of the crank of a reciprocating engine when the piston is at its nearest point to the crankshaft
  • boundary condition — a stated restriction, usually in the form of an equation, that limits the possible solutions to a differential equation.
  • bounty-fed farmers — farmers who benefit from subsidies
  • bourdon-tube gauge — an instrument for measuring the pressure of gases or liquids, consisting of a semicircular or coiled, flexible metal tube attached to a gauge that records the degree to which the tube is straightened by the pressure of the gas or liquid inside.
  • branch instruction — a machine-language or assembly-language instruction that causes the computer to branch to another instruction
  • branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
  • branching fraction — (in branching) the proportion of the disintegrating nuclei that follow a particular branch to the total number of disintegrating nuclides
  • brand-name product — A brand-name product is one which is made by a well-known manufacturer and has the manufacturer's label on it.
  • brazilian rosewood — a Brazilian tree, Dalbergia nigra, of the legume family.
  • breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
  • breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
  • break your silence — If someone breaks their silence about something, they talk about something that they have not talked about before or for a long time.
  • breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
  • british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
  • broad-leaved maple — a maple, Acer macrophyllum, of western North America, characterized by dark green, thickened leaves that may reach 12 inches (30 cm) or more in width.
  • broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
  • broken twill weave — a twill weave in which the direction of the diagonal produced by the weft threads is reversed after no more than two passages of the weft.
  • bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.
  • bronchocandidiasis — See under candidiasis.
  • brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.
  • brute force attack — (cryptography)   A method of breaking a cipher (that is, to decrypt a specific encrypted text) by trying every possible key. The quicker the brute force attack, the weaker the cipher. Feasibility of brute force attack depends on the key length of the cipher, and on the amount of computational power available to the attacker. Brute force attack is impossible against the ciphers with variable-size key, such as a one-time pad cipher.
  • burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
  • bursa of fabricius — a lymphoid gland of the cloaca in birds, believed to function in disease resistance, and closing or disappearing as the bird ages.
  • butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
  • cabernet sauvignon — a black grape originally grown in the Bordeaux area of France, and now throughout the wine-producing world
  • cabinet government — parliamentary government.
  • california rosebay — a Pacific coast shrub or tree (Rhododendron californicum) of the heath family, with rosy or purplish flowers
  • cambrian mountains — a mountain range in Wales, extending from Carmarthenshire in the S to Denbighshire in the N. Highest peak: Aran Fawddwy, 891 m (2970 ft)
  • cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
  • carbonic anhydrase — an enzyme in blood cells that catalyses the decomposition of carbonic acid into carbon dioxide and water, facilitating the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs
  • carbonic-anhydride — carbon dioxide.
  • carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
  • carisbrooke castle — a castle near Newport on the Isle of Wight: Charles I was held prisoner here from 1647 until his execution in 1649
  • catch one's breath — When you catch your breath while you are doing something energetic, you stop for a short time so that you can start breathing normally again.
  • cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
  • chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
  • chlorobromomethane — a clear, colorless, volatile, nonflammable liquid, CH 2 ClBr, used chiefly as an extinguishing agent in fire extinguishers and as a solvent in organic synthesis.
  • chlorofluorocarbon — Chlorofluorocarbons are the same as CFCs.
  • christian brothers — a religious congregation of laymen founded in France in 1684 for the education of the poor
  • claustrophobically — In a claustrophobic way.
  • clay-colored robin — any of several small Old World birds having a red or reddish breast, especially Erithacus rubecula, of Europe.
  • clobbering machine — pressure to conform with accepted standards
  • combination square — an adjustable device for carpenters, used as a try square, miter square, level, etc.
  • combined operation — a military operation carried out jointly by allied forces
  • combustion chamber — an enclosed space in which combustion takes place, such as the space above the piston in the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine or the chambers in a gas turbine or rocket engine in which fuel and oxidant burn
  • combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
  • come back to earth — to return to reality from a fantasy or daydream
  • complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
  • connected subgraph — (mathematics)   A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
  • controllable-pitch — (of a marine or aircraft propeller) having blades whose pitch can be changed during navigation or flight; variable-pitch.
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