16-letter words containing a, t, o, l, s, e
- ballast resistor — ballast (def 5a).
- ballast-resistor — Nautical. any heavy material carried temporarily or permanently in a vessel to provide desired draft and stability.
- bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
- basal metabolism — the amount of energy required by an individual in the resting state, for such functions as breathing and circulation of the blood
- basement complex — 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.
- benoit samuelson — Joan (Joan Benoit) born 1957, U.S. distance runner: first Olympic marathon women's winner, 1984.
- bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
- blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
- bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
- bootstrap loader — (operating system) A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
- bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
- bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
- bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
- cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
- call in question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
- call one's shots — a discharge of a firearm, bow, etc.
- call to quarters — a bugle call shortly before taps, notifying soldiers to retire to their quarters
- carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
- cashless society — a society in which purchases of goods or services are made by credit card or electronic funds transferral rather than with cash or checks.
- catch oneself on — to realize that one's actions are mistaken
- category listing — A category listing is a list of different product categories such as menswear, womenswear, and childrenswear.
- chattel personal — an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
- cholecystography — radiography of the gall bladder after administration of a contrast medium
- cholesterolaemia — the presence of abnormally high levels of cholesterol in the blood
- citronella grass — a tropical Asian grass, Cymbopogon (or Andropogon) nardus, with bluish-green lemon-scented leaves
- civilian clothes — not military uniform
- cloak-and-suiter — a manufacturer or seller of clothing.
- cloistered vault — a vault having the form of a number of intersecting coves.
- close by/at hand — Something that is close by or close at hand is near to you.
- closed-captioned — (of a video recording) having subtitles which appear on screen only if the cassette is played through a special decoder
- closing argument — In a court case, a lawyer's closing argument is their final speech, in which they give a summary of their case.
- cochineal cactus — a treelike cactus, Nopalea cochenillifera, of Mexico and Central America, that is a principal source of food of the cochineal insect.
- cochineal insect — a Mexican homopterous insect, Dactylopius coccus, that feeds on cacti
- cocktail sausage — a small sausage served with drinks
- collectivisation — Alternative spelling of collectivization.
- colles' fracture — a fracture of the radius just above the wrist, with backward and outward displacement of the hand
- colonial heights — a town in central Virginia.
- columbia heights — a city in SE Minnesota, near Minneapolis.
- commensurability — The quality of being commensurable or commensurate.
- compartmentalise — to divide into categories or compartments.
- complexity class — (algorithm) A collection of algorithms or computable functions with the same complexity.
- composite family — the large and varied plant family Compositae (or Asteraceae), typified by herbaceous plants having alternate, opposite, or whorled leaves and a whorl of bracts surrounding the flower heads, which are usually composed of a disk containing tiny petalless flowers and a ray of petals extending from the flowers at the rim of the disk, some flower heads being composed only of a disk or a ray and some plants having clusters of flower heads, and including the aster, daisy, dandelion, goldenrod, marigold, ragweed, sunflower, thistle, and zinnia.
- conciliatoriness — tending to conciliate: a conciliatory manner; conciliatory comments.
- conditional sale — a sale in which the title of a property remains with the seller until some condition is met, as the payment of the full purchase price.
- confidentialness — The state or quality of being confidential.
- congressionalist — of or relating to a congress.
- consenting adult — a male person over the age of sixteen, who may legally engage in homosexual behaviour in private
- consequentialism — the doctrine that an action is right or wrong according as its consequences are good or bad
- consequentialist — the theory that human actions derive their moral worth solely from their outcomes or consequences.
- consequentiality — following as an effect, result, or outcome; resultant; consequent.