17-letter words containing a, l, k
- centrifugal brake — a safety mechanism on a hoist, crane, etc, that consists of revolving brake shoes that are driven outwards by centrifugal force into contact with a fixed brake drum when the rope drum revolves at excessive speed
- chadless keypunch — (hardware) A card punch which cut little U-shapes in punched cards, rather than punching out a circle or rectangle. The U's made a hole when folded back. One of the Jargon File's correspondents believed that the term "chad" derived from the Chadless keypunch. Obviously, if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be "chad". The assertion that the keypunch was named after its inventor is not supported by any record in US or UK patents or surname references.
- checkable deposit — a checking account
- chicklet keyboard — (spelling) It's spelled "chiclet keyboard".
- chukchi peninsula — a peninsula in the extreme NE of Russia, in NE Siberia: mainly tundra
- clicks and mortar — making use of traditional trading methods in conjunction with internet trading
- clicks-and-mortar — pertaining to or denoting a company that does business on the Internet and in traditional stores or offices.
- cloud cuckoo land — an idealized, illusory domain of imagination; cloudland: the cloud-cuckoo-land of technicolor cartoon whimsy.
- cloud-cuckoo-land — If you say that someone is living in cloud-cuckoo-land, you are criticizing them because they think there are no problems and that things will happen exactly as they want them to, when this is obviously not the case.
- cock-a-doodle-doo — an imitation or representation of a cock crowing
- cocktail waitress — a woman who serves in a bar or cocktail lounge
- coffee-table book — A coffee-table book is a large expensive book with a lot of pictures, which is designed to be looked at rather than to be read properly, and is usually placed where people can see it easily.
- cook island māori — a dialect of Māori spoken in the Cook Islands
- coral honeysuckle — trumpet honeysuckle.
- critical thinking — disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence: The questions are intended to develop your critical thinking.
- crude oil cracker — A crude oil cracker is the part of a refinery and the equipment used for changing crude oil to its fractions, using heat and pressure.
- dark-complexioned — (of a person) having a dark complexion
- devil's food cake — a rich chocolate cake
- digital audiodisk — a compact disk containing an audio program.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- drink like a fish — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- 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
- elastic stockings — something made of elastic which you wear on your legs to aid circulation
- english breakfast — An English breakfast is a breakfast consisting of cooked food such as bacon, eggs, sausages, and tomatoes. It also includes toast and tea or coffee.
- fair market value — The fair market value of an asset is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for it on the open market.
- falkland islander — a person from the Falkland Islands
- federal land bank — a U.S. federal bank for making long-term loans to farmers.
- felix frankfurter — Felix, 1882–1965, U.S. jurist, born in Austria: associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1939–62.
- fermentation lock — a valve placed on the top of bottles of fermenting wine to allow bubbles to escape
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flat as a pancake — without any curves or bumps
- flickertail state — North Dakota (used as a nickname).
- floating dry dock — a dock that floats and can be lowered in the water for the entrance of a ship, and then raised for use as a dry dock
- frederick william — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
- game as ned kelly — extremely brave; indomitable
- general knowledge — commonly known facts
- go like hot cakes — to be sold very quickly or in large quantities
- goldbeater's skin — the prepared outside membrane of the large intestine of the ox, used by goldbeaters to lay between the leaves of the metal while they beat it into gold leaf.
- golden hand-shake — a special incentive, as generous severance pay, given to an older employee as an inducement to elect early retirement.
- grandfather clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- grandmother clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
- hammer and sickle — the emblem of the Soviet Union, adopted in 1923 and consisting of an insignia of a hammer with its handle across the blade of a sickle and a star above.
- hard rock geology — (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining (hard-rock mining) and geology (hard-rock geology)
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- i'll thank you to — used ironically to intensify a command, request, etc
- in all likelihood — very probably
- jerusalem cricket — a large, nocturnal, wingless, long-horned grasshopper, Stenopelmatus fuscus, occuring chiefly in loose soil and sand along the Pacific coast of the U.S.
- kaleidoscopically — of, relating to, or created by a kaleidoscope.
- kansas city style — a style of jazz developed in Kansas City, Mo., in the early 1930s, marked by a strong blues influence, the use of riffs as a characteristic formal device, and a less pronounced beat than that of the New Orleans or Chicago style of jazz.