13-letter words containing a, r, c, t
- autumn crocus — a liliaceous plant, Colchicum autumnale, of Europe and N Africa having pink or purplish autumn flowers
- averruncation — the act of averting or turning away
- azurmalachite — a blue-green ornamental stone consisting of a mixture of azurite and malachite.
- baby snatcher — a person who steals a baby from its pram
- baccalaureate — The baccalaureate is an examination taken by students at the age of eighteen in France and some other countries.
- bachelor flat — a flat lived in, or intended for a bachelor
- bachelorettes — Plural form of bachelorette.
- back straight — a straight part of a circuit, esp of an athletics track or a racecourse, furthest from the finishing point
- back to front — If you are wearing something back to front, you are wearing it with the back of it at the front of your body. If you do something back to front, you do it the wrong way around, starting with the part that should come last.
- backformation — Alternative spelling of back-formation.
- backing store — a computer storage device, usually a disk, that provides additional storage space for information so that it can be accessed and referred to when required and may be copied into the processor if needed
- backing track — a recorded instrumental or vocal accompaniment for a pop singer or pop number
- backscratcher — an implement with a long handle, used for scratching one's back
- backwardation — the difference between the spot price for a commodity, including rent and interest, and the forward price
- bacteriocidal — Alternative spelling of bactericidal.
- bacteriogenic — Caused by bacteria.
- bacteriologic — a branch of microbiology dealing with the identification, study, and cultivation of bacteria and with their applications in medicine, agriculture, industry, and biotechnology.
- bacteriolysin — an antibody which, when it combines with bacterial cells, causes lysis of those cells, thus destroying them
- bacteriolysis — the destruction or disintegration of bacteria
- bacteriolytic — disintegration or dissolution of bacteria.
- bacteriophage — a virus that is parasitic in a bacterium and multiplies within its host, which is destroyed when the new viruses are released
- bacteriophagy — the action of a bacteriophage
- bacterioscopy — the examination of bacteria with a microscope.
- bacteriostats — Plural form of bacteriostat.
- bacteriotoxin — any toxin that kills bacteria
- bacterization — subjection to bacterial action
- bag of tricks — a container or receptacle of leather, plastic, cloth, paper, etc., capable of being closed at the mouth; pouch.
- balanced tree — (algorithm) An optimisation of a tree which aims to keep equal numbers of items on each subtree of each node so as to minimise the maximum path from the root to any leaf node. As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of faster search. A B-tree is a kind of balanced tree that can have more than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not restricted to being a binary tree).
- ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
- band spectrum — a spectrum consisting of a number of bands of closely spaced lines that are associated with emission or absorption of radiation by molecules
- bandicoot rat — any of three burrowing rats of the genera Bandicota and Nesokia, of S and SE Asia: family Muridae
- banister back — a back of a chair or the like, usually having semicircular spindles between the top rail and the cross rail or seat.
- barbary coast — coastal region of N Africa, extending from Egypt to the Atlantic, inhabited chiefly by Berbers and once (until early 19th cent.) dominated by pirates
- barber's itch — any of various fungal infections of the bearded portion of the neck and face
- barcoo salute — a movement of the hand to brush flies away from the face
- baritone clef — an F clef locating F below middle C on the third line of the staff.
- baroclinicity — a common state of fluid stratification in which surfaces of constant pressure and others of constant density are not parallel but intersect.
- baroreceptors — Plural form of baroreceptor.
- barrel cactus — any of several large, cylindrical, ribbed, spiny cacti of the genera Echinocactus and Ferocactus.
- barytocalcite — a mineral, double carbonate of calcium and barium, CaCO 3 ⋅BaCO 3 , usually found in veins of lead minerals.
- basement-rock — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
- basic fortran — (language) A subset of Fortran.
- bass clarinet — a clarinet with the lowest range, in the octave below the B-flat clarinet
- batch-process — to perform batch processing on (files)
- bathtub curve — Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it "tires out". See also burn-in period, infant mortality.
- batrachotoxin — a steroidal alkaloid, C31H42N2O6, found in the skin of certain Neotropical frogs (genus Phyllobates) and used on poison arrows: one of the most powerful natural neurotoxins known
- battlecruiser — A large warship of a type built in the early 20th century, carrying similar armament to a battleship but faster and more lightly armored.
- behavioristic — the theory or doctrine that human or animal psychology can be accurately studied only through the examination and analysis of objectively observable and quantifiable behavioral events, in contrast with subjective mental states.
- bench warrant — a warrant issued by a judge or court directing that an offender be apprehended
- berber carpet — a type of plain coloured carpeting, usually cream, oatmeal or light brown