16-letter words containing a, r, o, n
- aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
- azodicarbonamide — (chemistry) An organic chemical, a yellow to orange red, odorless, crystalline powder, used in food industry as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent and improving agent and in foaming plastics.
- azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
- back-propagation — (Or "backpropagation") A learning algorithm for modifying a feed-forward neural network which minimises a continuous "error function" or "objective function." Back-propagation is a "gradient descent" method of training in that it uses gradient information to modify the network weights to decrease the value of the error function on subsequent tests of the inputs. Other gradient-based methods from numerical analysis can be used to train networks more efficiently. Back-propagation makes use of a mathematical trick when the network is simulated on a digital computer, yielding in just two traversals of the network (once forward, and once back) both the difference between the desired and actual output, and the derivatives of this difference with respect to the connection weights.
- background check — an investigation into a person's origins and previous history
- background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
- background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
- background paper — a report or other piece of writing that is intended to provide contextual and historical information that will help people understand a particular topic or situation
- backus-naur form — (language, grammar) (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of Donald Knuth. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a metasyntax?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see RFC 2234). Consider this BNF for a US postal address:
::= ::= | "." ::= [ ] | ::= [ ] ::= "," This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the regexp wild cards such as "*" or "+". EBNF is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the ALGOL 60 report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognised. ABNF is another extension. - backward-looking — If you describe someone or something as backward-looking, you disapprove of their attitudes, ideas, or actions because they are based on old-fashioned opinions or methods.
- bacterioplankton — (biology) The bacterial component of marine plankton.
- badminton racket — the type of racket used in games of badminton
- balance of power — The balance of power is the way in which power is distributed between rival groups or countries.
- balance of trade — A country's balance of trade is the difference in value, over a period of time, between the goods it imports and the goods it exports.
- balloon catheter — a type of catheter with a tiny, inflatable balloon at the tip, used in various surgical procedures
- balloon mortgage — A balloon mortgage is a mortgage on which the repayments are relatively small until the large final payment.
- ballroom dancing — Ballroom dancing is a type of dancing in which a man and a woman dance together using fixed sequences of steps and movements.
- baltimore canyon — a submarine valley cut into the continental shelf and slope seaward of Chesapeake Bay.
- bankruptcy court — a section of the United States federal court which specializes in the handling of bankruptcy cases
- bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
- bargaining power — the ability of a person, group, or organization to exert influence over another party in a negotiation in order to achieve a deal which is favourable to themselves
- bargaining scope — the range of topics within the scope of a particular set of negotiations leading to a collective agreement
- barium carbonate — a white, poisonous, water-insoluble powder, BaCO 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of rodenticides, paints, and dyes.
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
- bastard mahogany — an Australian tree, Eucalyptus botryoides, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and furrowed bark.
- bastard pointing — an imitation of tuck pointing, having a fillet made from the mortar of the joint.
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- batch production — production of goods in batches, rather than continuously
- bathroom cabinet — a wall-mounted cabinet in a bathroom, typically with a mirror front and used for the storage of medicines and toiletries
- batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- be on the market — to be offered for sale
- bear one's cross — a structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, used to execute persons in ancient times.
- behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
- behavioural sink — a small area in which people or animals live in overcrowded conditions
- bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- beneficial owner — a person entitled to receive the profits or proceeds of property
- beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- bihar and orissa — a former province of NE India: now divided into the states of Bihar and Odisha (formerly Orissa).
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
- binocular fusion — fusion (def 5a).
- binocular-fusion — the act or process of fusing; the state of being fused.
- binomial theorem — a mathematical theorem that gives the expansion of any binomial raised to a positive integral power, n. It contains n + 1 terms: (x + a)n = xn + nxn–1a + [n(n–1)/2] xn–2a2 +…+ (nk) xn–kak + … + an, where (nk) = n!/(n–k)!k!, the number of combinations of k items selected from n
- biodeterioration — biodegradation.
- bioenvironmental — pertaining to the environment of living organisms: Bioenvironmental engineers seek to reduce air and water pollution.
- biofortification — the process of breeding staple crops to have higher levels of essential nutrients, either through selective breeding or genetic modification: iron biofortification of rice; biofortification of wheat with zinc.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- bitterroot range — range of the Rocky Mountains, along the Ida.-Mont. border: highest peak, c. 11,000 ft (3,353 m)