18-letter words containing a, b, s, e
- 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
- california rosebay — a Pacific coast shrub or tree (Rhododendron californicum) of the heath family, with rosy or purplish flowers
- camel's-hair brush — an artist's small brush, made of hair from a squirrel's tail
- camembert (cheese) — a soft, rich, creamy partly ripened cheese
- 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
- carisbrooke castle — a castle near Newport on the Isle of Wight: Charles I was held prisoner here from 1647 until his execution in 1649
- cas 8051 assembler — An experimental one-pass assembler for the 8051 with C-like syntax by Mark Hopkins. Most features of a modern assembler included except macros (soon to be added). Requires an ANSI-C compiler. Ported to MS-DOS, Ultrix, Sun-4. (July 1993). Version 1.2. Assembler/linker, disassembler, documentation, examples.
- 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.
- 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
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- change the subject — to select a new topic of conversation
- chebyshev equation — Tchebycheff equation.
- christian brethren — Brother of the Christian Schools.
- christian brothers — a religious congregation of laymen founded in France in 1684 for the education of the poor
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- combination square — an adjustable device for carpenters, used as a try square, miter square, level, etc.
- 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
- 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.
- cool as a cucumber — very calm; self-possessed
- correspondent bank — A correspondent bank is a bank that provides services such as accepting deposits for another bank.
- creme de framboise — a liqueur flavored with raspberries.
- debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
- deductive database — (database) A combination of a conventional database containing facts, a knowledge base containing rules, and an inference engine which allows the derivation of information implied by the facts and rules. Commonly, the knowledge base is expressed in a subset of first-order logic and either a SLDNF or Datalog inference engine is used.
- demand liabilities — the assets of a financial institution that are demandable by depositors
- depository library — a library designated by law to receive without charge all or a selection of the official publications of a government.
- devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
- diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
- didaskaleinophobia — The fear of going to school.
- disability pension — a pension paid to people who are unable to continue to work because of a disability
- dispersible tablet — A dispersible tablet is a tablet that disintegrates in water or other liquid.
- double-page spread — two pages treated as one in a publication, with images or text extending across the binding
- dressing table set — a set including a hairbrush, mirror and comb, often with silver backs
- eclipsing variable — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- elizabethan sonnet — Shakespearean sonnet
- engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
- epstein-barr virus — a virus belonging to the herpes family that causes infectious mononucleosis; it is also implicated in the development of Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease
- escape sb's notice — If something escapes your notice, you fail to recognize it or realize it.
- established church — a Church that is officially recognized as a national institution, esp the Church of England
- establishmentarian — Adhering to, advocating, or relating to the principle of an established church.
- fantasy basketball — imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
- fibonacci sequence — (mathematics) The infinite sequence of numbers beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... in which each term is the sum of the two terms preceding it. The ratio of successive Fibonacci terms tends to the golden ratio, namely (1 + sqrt 5)/2.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
- flat file database — (database) A database containing a single table, stored in a single flat file, often in a human-readable format such as comma-separated values or fixed-width columns.
- flat on one's back — lying supine