15-letter words containing a, c, r, o, n
- arms inspection — the official checking of a country's weapons and other military equipment, usually to check that international agreements have been respected
- arroz con pollo — a Latin American dish consisting of chicken and rice cooked usually with saffron
- astrodynamicist — a person who studies astrodynamics
- astronautically — In an astronautic way.
- at short notice — Notice is used in expressions such as 'at short notice', 'at a moment's notice' or 'at twenty-four hours' notice', to indicate that something can or must be done within a short period of time.
- at the controls — If someone is at the controls of a machine or other piece of equipment, they are operating it.
- audio frequency — a frequency in the range 20 hertz to 20 000 hertz. A sound wave of this frequency would be audible to the human ear
- audio recording — an electronic recording of sound
- autocorrelation — the condition occurring when successive items in a series are correlated so that their covariance is not zero and they are not independent
- autofluorescent — Of, pertaining to, or exhibiting autofluorescence.
- away-going crop — a crop planted by a tenant that matures after the expiration of the tenancy and is rightfully the tenant's to harvest.
- back projection — a method of projecting pictures onto a translucent screen so that they are viewed from the opposite side, used esp in films to create the illusion that the actors in the foreground are moving
- backup rotation — (operating system) Any system for re-using backup media, e.g. magnetic tape. One extreme would be to use the same media for every backup (e.g. copy disk A to disk B), the other extreme would be to use new media every time. The trade-off is between the cost of buying and storing media and the ability to restore any version of any file. One example is the Grandfather, Father, Son (GFS) scheme.
- baconian theory — the theory attributing the authorship of Shakespeare's plays to Francis Bacon.
- badminton court — the court on which games of badminton are played
- baja california — peninsula in Mexico, between the Pacific & the Gulf of California: divided into a northern state (Baja California), 27,071 sq mi (70,114 sq km), pop. 1,661,000, cap. Mexicali; and a southern state (Baja California Sur), 28,447 sq mi (73,677 sq km), pop. 318,000, cap. La Paz
- balance control — a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.
- ballroom dancer — a person who participates in ballroom dancing
- banking product — one of the various services offered by a bank to its customers: mortgages, loans, insurance etc
- barbizon school — a group of French painters of landscapes of the 1840s, including Théodore Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Corot, and Millet
- barcelona chair — an armless, padded leather chair on a steel frame shaped like a curved X: Barcelona is a trademark for this chair
- bargain counter — a store counter on which goods are displayed for sale at reduced prices
- barn conversion — the adaptation of a farm barn into a building serving a different use, such as a house or commercial premises
- beach goldenrod — a composite plant, Solidago sempervirens, of eastern and southern North America, having a thick stem and large, branched, one-sided terminal clusters of yellow flowers, flourishing on sea beaches or salt marshes.
- bear comparison — to be sufficiently similar in class or range to be compared with (something else), esp favourably
- ben day process — a method of adding texture, shading, or detail to line drawings by overlaying a transparent sheet of dots or any other pattern during platemaking
- benedict arnold — Benedict, 1741–1801, American general in the Revolutionary War who became a traitor.
- benzal chloride — a colorless, oily liquid, C 7 H 6 Cl 2 , used chiefly in the synthesis of benzaldehyde, and in the manufacture of dyes.
- beta conversion — (theory) A term from lambda-calculus for beta reduction or beta abstraction.
- bidirectionally — in a bidirectional manner
- bioastronautics — the study of the effects of space flight on living organisms
- black horehound — a hairy unpleasant-smelling chiefly Mediterranean plant, Ballota nigra, having clusters of purple flowers: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- black operation — a covert and undocumented military operation
- black snakeroot — a tall bugbane, Cimicifuga racemosa, of the buttercup family, of eastern North America, having thin, tapering, toothed or deeply cut leaflets and branched clusters of small, white flowers.
- bladder campion — a European caryophyllaceous plant, Silene vulgaris, having white flowers with an inflated calyx
- blockade runner — a person, ship etc that tries to carry goods through a blockade
- blockade-runner — a ship or person that passes through a blockade.
- boa constrictor — A boa constrictor is a large snake that kills animals by wrapping itself round their bodies and squeezing them to death. Boa constrictors are found mainly in South and Central America and the West Indies.
- boarding school — A boarding school is a school which some or all of the pupils live in during the school term. Compare day school.
- borderline case — a person or thing that is not clearly classifiable as something
- boston massacre — an outbreak (1770) in Boston against British troops, in which a few citizens were killed
- brachistochrone — the curve between two points through which a body moves under the force of gravity in a shorter time than for any other curve; the path of quickest descent
- branchial pouch — one of a series of rudimentary outcroppings of the inner pharyngeal wall, corresponding to the branchial grooves on the surface.
- branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
- breakdown cover — insurance cover against breakdowns in a vehicle
- bristol channel — an inlet of the Atlantic, between S Wales and SW England, merging into the Severn estuary. Length: about 137 km (85 miles)
- britneyfication — the effect on clothes and fashions of following the revealing styles favoured by the US pop singer Britney Spears (born 1981)
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- bronzed grackle — the western subspecies of the American bird, the common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula versicolor, having bronzy, iridescent plumage.
- buffalo currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes odoratum, of the central U.S., having showy, drooping clusters of fragrant yellow flowers and edible black fruit.