17-letter words containing a, e, t, i, o
- baltimore clipper — a small, fast American sailing vessel of the early 19th century, having a sharp hull form and two masts with a pronounced rake and carrying a brig or schooner rig.
- bar-tailed godwit — a large wader, Limosa lapponica, of the family Scolopacidae which, in migrating from Alaska to New Zealand, makes the longest journey without stopping for food taken by any animal
- barrel distortion — distortion of an image produced by an optical system that causes straight lines at image margins to bulge outwards
- baseboard heating — a heating system by pipes, through which steam or hot water circulates, near the base of the walls of rooms
- battle of britain — (in World War II) the series of aerial combats that took place between British and German aircraft during the autumn of 1940 and that included the severe bombardment of British cities.
- beat one's brains — to try hard to remember, understand, or solve something
- beefsteak begonia — an ornamental plant, Begonia erythrophylla, having light-pink flowers and nearly round, thick, fleshy leaves that are red on the underside.
- behaviour therapy — any of various means of treating psychological disorders, such as desensitization, aversion therapy, and instrumental conditioning, that depend on the patient systematically learning new modes of behaviour
- bell laboratories — One of AT&T's research sites, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA. It was the birthplace of the transistor, Unix, C and C++ and the current home of research on Plan 9 and ODE.
- benjamin-constant — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
- benoit mandelbrot — (person) /ben'wa man'dl-bro/ Benoit B. Mandelbrot. The IBM scientist who wrote several original books on fractals and gave his name to the set he was discovered, the Mandelbrot set and coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break".
- betagalactosidase — any of a family of enzymes capable of liberating galactose from carbohydrates.
- bill of adventure — a certificate made out by a merchant to show that goods handled by him and his agents are the property of another party at whose risk the dealing is done
- bill of attainder — (formerly) a legislative act finding a person guilty without trial of treason or felony and declaring him attainted
- binet-simon scale — a test comprising questions and tasks, used to determine the mental age of subjects, usually children
- biological father — the man whose semen fertilized the ovum from which a child was born
- biological mother — the mother who gave birth to a child
- biological parent — a parent who has conceived (biological mother) or sired (biological father) rather than adopted a child and whose genes are therefore transmitted to the child.
- biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
- bitter almond oil — almond oil (def 2).
- bitter-almond-oil — Also called sweet almond oil, expressed almond oil. a colorless to pale yellow fatty oil expressed from the seeds of the sweet almond, used in preparing perfumes and confections.
- black-box testing — functional testing
- board of estimate — a special organ of a municipal government, as of New York City, composed of the mayor, the president of the city council, and the controller, and charged with approving the city's budget and fiscal matters.
- boat-billed heron — a nocturnal, tropical American wading bird (Cochlearius cochlearius) with a large, broad bill: it is the only member of a family (Cochleariidae) of wading birds
- bohemian brethren — a Protestant Christian sect formed in the 15th century from various Hussite groups, which rejected oaths and military service and advocated a pure and disciplined spiritual life. It was reorganized in 1722 as the Moravian Church
- bombardier beetle — any of various small carabid beetles of the genus Brachinus, esp B. crepitans of Europe, which defend themselves by ejecting a jet of volatile fluid
- book depreciation — Book depreciation is depreciation in a company's internal financial records that is different from the amount that is used for taxes.
- boolean operation — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
- boothia peninsula — a peninsula of N Canada: the northernmost part of the mainland of North America, lying west of the Gulf of Boothia, an arm of the Arctic Ocean
- bore-stroke ratio — The bore-stroke ratio is the ratio of bore to stroke. A ratio of 1:1 is referred to informally as square.
- bouncebackability — the ability to recover after a setback, esp in sport
- branch prediction — (processor, algorithm) A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.
- brazilian peridot — a light yellowish-green tourmaline used as a gem: not a true peridot.
- breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
- brighton and hove — a city and unitary authority in S England, in East Sussex. Pop: 251 500 (2003 est). Area: 72 sq km (28 sq miles)
- british cameroons — a former British trust territory of West Africa
- british-cameroons — German Kamerun. a region in W Africa: a German protectorate 1884–1919; divided in 1919 into British and French mandates.
- broadview heights — a town in N Ohio.
- brownian movement — random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a fluid, caused by bombardment of the particles by molecules of the fluid. First observed in 1827, it provided strong evidence in support of the kinetic theory of molecules
- bureaucratization — to divide an administrative agency or office into bureaus.
- buyers' inflation — inflation in which rising demand results in a rise in prices.
- cache consistency — cache coherency
- caesarean section — A Caesarean or a Caesarean section is an operation in which a baby is lifted out of a woman's womb through an opening cut in her abdomen.
- café-au-lait spot — a brown patch on the skin that can occur normally in small numbers or in neurofibromatosis, when they are more numerous
- cage zone melting — zone melting of a square bar of the material to be purified, done so that the impurities are concentrated at the corners.
- calcium carbonate — a white crystalline salt occurring in limestone, chalk, marble, calcite, coral, and pearl: used in the production of lime and cement. Formula: CaCO3
- calcium gluconate — a white, tasteless, water-soluble powder, CaC 12 H 22 O 14 , used as a dietary supplement to provide calcium.
- calcium phosphate — the insoluble nonacid calcium salt of orthophosphoric acid (phosphoric(V) acid): it occurs in bones and is the main constituent of bone ash. Formula: Ca3(PO4)2
- california nutmeg — a tall, pungently aromatic California evergreen tree, Torreya californica, of the yew family, having a fissured, gray-brown bark and small, purple-streaked, green fruit.
- california privet — a privet, Ligustrum ovalifolium, of the olive family, native to Japan, having glossy, oval leaves and long clusters of white flowers, widely used for hedges in the U.S.