15-letter words containing a, l, i, b
- bristol fashion — clean and neat, with newly painted and scrubbed surfaces, brass polished, etc
- britannia metal — an alloy of low melting point consisting of tin with 5–10 per cent antimony, 1–3 per cent copper, and sometimes small quantities of zinc, lead, or bismuth: used for decorative purposes and for bearings
- british library — the British national library, formed in 1973 from the British Museum library and other national collections: housed mainly in the British Museum until 1997 when a purpose-built library in St Pancras, London, was completed
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- brown-tail moth — a white moth, Nygmia phaerrhoea, having a brown tuft at the end of the abdomen, the larvae of which feed on the foliage of various shade and fruit trees.
- buffalo soldier — (formerly, especially among American Indians) a black soldier.
- bug fix release — (programming) A release which introduces no new features, but which merely aims to fix bugs in previous releases. All too commonly new bugs are introduced at the same time.
- building trades — the trades and professions concerned with the creation and finishing of buildings, such as carpenters, plasterers, masons, electricians, etc.
- bulimia nervosa — a disorder characterized by compulsive overeating followed by vomiting: sometimes associated with anxiety about gaining weight
- burt l standish — Burt L. pseudonym of Gilbert Patten.
- buryat republic — a constituent republic of SE central Russia, on Lake Baikal: mountainous, with forests covering over half the total area. Capital: Ulan-Ude. Pop: 981 000 (2002). Area: 351 300 sq km (135 608 sq miles)
- business casual — a style of casual clothing worn by businesspeople at work instead of more formal attire
- butterfly chair — a lightweight chair consisting of a piece of canvas, leather, etc. slung from a framework of metal bars
- cabbalistically — Alternative spelling of cabalistically.
- calcined baryta — baryta (def 1).
- calcined-baryta — Also called calcined baryta, barium oxide, barium monoxide, barium protoxide. a white or yellowish-white poisonous solid, BaO, highly reactive with water: used chiefly as a dehydrating agent and in the manufacture of glass.
- calcium blocker — any of a group of drugs that prevent the influx of calcium into excitable tissues such as smooth muscle of the heart or arterioles, used in the treatment of angina, hypertension, and certain arrhythmias.
- calcium carbide — a grey salt of calcium used in the production of acetylene (by its reaction with water) and calcium cyanamide. Formula: CaC2
- call into being — to create
- calydonian boar — a savage boar sent by Artemis to destroy Calydon, a city in Aetolia, because its king had neglected to sacrifice to her. It was killed by Meleager, the king's son
- camelot library — (library)
- cannellini bean — a cream-coloured kidney-shaped bean with a mild flavour
- cannibalisation — Alternative form of cannibalization.
- cannibalization — to subject to cannibalism.
- cantilever beam — a long thick straight-sided piece of wood, metal, concrete, etc that is fixed at one end and is free at the other
- carboxylic acid — any of a class of organic acids containing the carboxyl group
- cardinal beetle — any of various large N temperate beetles of the family Pyrochroidae, such as Pyrochroa serraticornis, typically scarlet or partly scarlet in colour
- cardinal number — A cardinal number is a number such as 1, 3, or 10 that tells you how many things there are in a group but not what order they are in. Compare ordinal number.
- caribbean plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, encompassing the Central American portion of North America, the Caribbean Sea, and the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, as well as the Leeward and Windward Islands; bordered north and south by the North and South American Plates and west by the Cocos Plate.
- cattle breeding — the science or business of breeding and raising cattle
- celestial globe — a spherical model of the celestial sphere showing the relative positions of stars, constellations, etc
- centrifugal box — a revolving chamber, used in the spinning of manufactured filaments, in which the plastic fibers, subjected to centrifugal force, are slightly twisted and emerge in the form of yarn wound into the shape of a hollow cylinder.
- cetti's warbler — a reddish-brown Eurasian warbler, Cettia cetti, with a distinctive song
- characterizable — Able to be characterized.
- chief constable — A Chief Constable is the officer who is in charge of the police force in a particular county or area in Britain.
- child abduction — the crime of removing a child from its rightful home
- child battering — child abuse in the form of battering
- child-battering — the physical abuse of a child by a parent or guardian, as by beating.
- chiller cabinet — a cupboard or chest in a shop where chilled foods and drinks are displayed and kept cool
- cinderella book — (publication) "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation", by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also book titles.
- circular buffer — (programming) An area of memory used to store a continuous stream of data by starting again at the beginning of the buffer after reaching the end. A circular buffer is usually written by one process and read by another. Separate read and write pointers are maintained. These are not allowed to pass each other otherwise either unread data would be overwritten or invalid data would be read. A circuit may implement a hardware circular buffer.
- circumambiently — in a circumambient manner
- circumambulated — Simple past tense and past participle of circumambulate.
- circumambulates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of circumambulate.
- circumnavigable — Able to be circumnavigated.
- claustrophobics — Plural form of claustrophobic.
- climb indicator — an instrument that shows the rate of ascent or descent of an aircraft, operating on a differential pressure principle.
- climb the walls — any of various permanent upright constructions having a length much greater than the thickness and presenting a continuous surface except where pierced by doors, windows, etc.: used for shelter, protection, or privacy, or to subdivide interior space, to support floors, roofs, or the like, to retain earth, to fence in an area, etc.
- clumber spaniel — a type of thickset spaniel having a broad heavy head
- collaboratively — in the manner of working with others on a joint project