18-letter words containing a, n, d, r, o
- back/down to earth — If you come down to earth or back to earth, you have to face the reality of everyday life after a period of great excitement.
- background reading — reading of related works in order to get contextual information on a topic that you are intending to study or write about
- balanced scorecard — A balanced scorecard is a type of management report which includes both financial and non-financial measures.
- barrow's goldeneye — See under goldeneye (def 1).
- bartholin's glands — two small reddish-yellow glands, one on each side of the vaginal orifice, that secrete a mucous lubricating substance during sexual stimulation in females
- battle of omdurman — a battle (1898) in which the Mahdi's successor and his Ansar followers were defeated by Lord Kitchener's British forces
- battleground-state — a state of the U.S. in which the Democratic and Republican candidates both have a good chance of winning and that is considered key to the outcome of a presidential election: the swing states of Ohio and Indiana.
- bel and the dragon — a book of the Apocrypha that is included as chapter 14 of Daniel in the Douay Bible.
- bend over backward — to try to an unusual degree (to please, pacify, etc.)
- bend someone's ear — to speak at length to an unwilling listener, esp to voice one's troubles
- bernard montgomery — Bernard Law, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein ("Monty") 1887–1976, British field marshal: World War II commander of British 8th Army in Africa and Europe.
- bernard of menthon — Saint(11th cent.); Fr. monk who founded hospices in the Swiss Alps: his day is May 28
- biodiversification — the process by which the diversity of plants or animals develops or is increased within a particular region or group of organisms.
- black-necked stork — a large Australian stork, Xenorhyncus asiaticus, having a white plumage, dark green back and tail, and red legs
- blackback flounder — any of various popular food flatfishes, as Parophrys vetulus of the Pacific (English sole) and Pseudopleuronectes americanus of the Atlantic (winter flounder or blackback flounder)
- bloodbrain barrier — a layer of tightly packed cells that make up the walls of brain capillaries and prevent substances in the blood from diffusing freely into the brain: passage across the cell membranes is determined by solubility in the lipid bilayer or recognition by a transport molecule.
- board of education — a group or agency with responsibility for education
- board of elections — a bipartisan board appointed usually by local authorities and charged with control of elections and voting procedure.
- board of examiners — a group of people who officially administer examinations
- board of governors — a group of people who oversee the running of a school
- borax pentahydrate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble solid, Na 2 B 4 O 7 ⋅5H 2 O, used chiefly for killing weeds, as a water softener, and as a disinfectant and deodorizing agent.
- boston brown bread — a dark, sweetened, steamed bread made of cornmeal, rye or wheat flour, etc., and molasses
- bottom dead center — Bottom dead center is the point at which the piston of an engine is nearest to the axis of the crankshaft. On a vertical engine, this is the lowest point that the piston reaches.
- bottom dead centre — the position of the crank of a reciprocating engine when the piston is at its nearest point to the crankshaft
- boundary condition — a stated restriction, usually in the form of an equation, that limits the possible solutions to a differential equation.
- bounty-fed farmers — farmers who benefit from subsidies
- bourdon-tube gauge — an instrument for measuring the pressure of gases or liquids, consisting of a semicircular or coiled, flexible metal tube attached to a gauge that records the degree to which the tube is straightened by the pressure of the gas or liquid inside.
- brand-name product — A brand-name product is one which is made by a well-known manufacturer and has the manufacturer's label on it.
- brazilian rosewood — a Brazilian tree, Dalbergia nigra, of the legume family.
- british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- bronchocandidiasis — See under candidiasis.
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- carbonic anhydrase — an enzyme in blood cells that catalyses the decomposition of carbonic acid into carbon dioxide and water, facilitating the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs
- carbonic-anhydride — carbon dioxide.
- carcinoid syndrome — the systemic effects, including flushing, palpitations, diarrhea, and cramps, resulting from increased blood levels of serotonin secreted by a carcinoid.
- career development — a progression through a series of jobs, each with more responsibility and a higher income than the last
- carolina chickadee — a chickadee, Parus carolinensis, of the southeastern U.S., resembling but smaller than the black-capped chickadee.
- cat's cry syndrome — a complex of congenital malformations in human infants caused by a chromosomal aberration and in which the infant emits a mewing cry.
- cationic detergent — a type of detergent in which the active part of the molecule is a positive ion (cation). Cationic detergents are usually quaternary ammonium salts and often also have bactericidal properties
- ceiling decoration — a plaster moulding for the centre of a ceiling; other decoration, such as coving
- centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
- cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
- cerenkov radiation — radiation emitted when a charged particle travels through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light through that medium
- character encoding — (character) (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping between binary data values and character code positions (or "code points"). Early systems stored characters in a variety of ways, e.g. four six-bit characters in a 24-bit word, but around 1960, eight-bit bytes started to become the most common data storage layout, with each character stored in one byte, typically in the ASCII character set. In the case of ASCII, the character encoding is an identity mapping: code position 65 maps to the byte value 65. This is possible because ASCII uses only code positions representable as single bytes, i.e., values between 0 and 255. (US-ASCII only uses values 0 to 127, in fact.) From the late 1990s, there was increased use of larger character sets such as Unicode and many CJK coded character sets. These can represent characters from many languages and more symbols.
- children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
- christian democrat — a member or supporter of a Christian Democratic party
- christian endeavor — an organization of young people of various evangelical Protestant churches, formed in 1881 to promote Christian principles and service.
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution