17-letter words containing a, c, b, l, e
- colour subcarrier — a component of a colour television signal on which is modulated the colour or chrominance information
- combe-capelle man — a skeleton of the early Upper Paleolithic Perigordian culture in France.
- companionableness — The state or quality of being companionable.
- congo-brazzaville — a republic in W Central Africa: formerly the French colony of Middle Congo, part of French Equatorial Africa, it became independent in 1960; consists mostly of equatorial forest, with savanna and extensive swamps; drained chiefly by the Rivers Congo and Ubangi. Official language: French. Religion: Christian majority. Currency: franc. Capital: Brazzaville. Pop: 4 492 689 (2013 est). Area: 342 000 sq km (132 018 sq miles)
- contingency table — an array having the frequency of occurrence of certain events in each of a number of samples
- contrasuggestible — responding or tending to respond to a suggestion by doing or believing the opposite
- culpable homicide — manslaughter
- cyrillic alphabet — the alphabet derived from that of the Greeks, supposedly by Saint Cyril, for the writing of Slavonic languages: now used primarily for Russian, Bulgarian, and the Serbian dialect of Serbo-Croat
- dagestan republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the Caspian Sea: annexed from Persia in 1813; rich mineral resources. Capital: Makhachkala. Pop: 2 584 200 (2002). Area: 50 278 sq km (19 416 sq miles)
- deathwatch beetle — a beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, whose woodboring larvae are a serious pest. The adult produces a rapid tapping sound with its head that was once popularly supposed to presage death
- deductible clause — a clause in an insurance policy stipulating that the insured will be liable for a specified initial amount of each loss, injury, etc., and that the insurance company will be liable for any additional costs up to the insured amount.
- deductive tableau — (tool) A theorem proof system consisting of a table whose rows contain assertions or goals. Variables in assertions are implicitly universally quantified and variables in goals are implicitly existentially quantified. The declarative meaning of a tableau is that if every instance of every assertion is true then some instance of at least one of the goals is true.
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- disability clause — a clause in a life-insurance policy providing for waiver of premium and sometimes payment of monthly income if the policyholder becomes totally and permanently disabled.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- economic blockade — an embargo on trade with a country, esp one which prohibits receipt of exports from that country, with the intention of disrupting the country's economy
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- fulgencio batista — Fulgencio [fool-hen-syaw] /fulˈhɛn syɔ/ (Show IPA), (Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar) 1901–73, Cuban military leader: dictator of Cuba 1934–40; president 1940–44, 1952–59.
- gamblers' fallacy — the fallacy that in a series of chance events the probability of one event occurring increases with the number of times another event has occurred in succession
- garbage collector — refuse collector, dustman
- hard-shelled crab — a crab, esp. an edible sea crab, before it has shed its hard shell
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- hubble's constant — the ratio of the recessional velocity of galaxies to their distance from the sun, with current measurements of its value ranging from 50 to 100 km/sec per megaparsec.
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperbolic spiral — rθ = a, (where a is a constant)
- hyperexcitability — an excessive reaction to stimuli.
- impracticableness — The state of being impracticable; impracticability.
- incompatibilities — not compatible; unable to exist together in harmony: She asked for a divorce because they were utterly incompatible.
- inconceivableness — The quality of being inconceivable.
- indecipherability — Quality of being indecipherable.
- indescribableness — The quality of being indescribable.
- instance variable — (programming) In object-oriented programming, one of the variables of a class template which may have a different value for each object of that class. Instance variables hold the state of an object.
- invincible armada — Armada.
- invisible balance — the difference in value between total exports of services plus payment of property incomes from abroad and total imports of services plus payment abroad of property incomes
- irreconcilability — incapable of being brought into harmony or adjustment; incompatible: irreconcilable differences.
- irrecoverableness — The quality of being irrecoverable.
- joachim du bellay — Joachim [French zhaw-a-keem] /French ʒɔ aˈkim/ (Show IPA), Bellay, Joachim du.
- karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
- keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.