16-letter words containing a, t, o, p
- biocompatibility — the capability of coexistence with living tissues or organisms without causing harm: Artificial joint adhesives must have biocompatibility with bone and muscle.
- biotic potential — the capacity of a population of organisms to increase in numbers under optimum environmental conditions.
- black bottom pie — a rich pie with a rum- or whiskey-flavored chocolate filling, often with a crust of crushed gingersnaps, and topped with whipped cream.
- blink comparator — an optical instrument used to detect small differences in two photographs of the same field or object by viewing them alternately, switching rapidly from one to the other.
- boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
- boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
- 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.
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
- branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
- break-even point — When a company reaches break-even point, the money it makes from the sale of goods or services is just enough to cover the cost of supplying those goods or services, but not enough to make a profit.
- broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
- brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
- burkitt lymphoma — a rare type of tumour of the white blood cells, occurring mainly in Africa and associated with infection by Epstein-Barr virus
- bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- cabbage palmetto — a tropical American fan palm, Sabal palmetto, with edible leaf buds and leaves used in thatching
- can-not help but — to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages.
- cantor's paradox — the paradox derived from the supposition of an all-inclusive universal set, since every set has more subsets than members while every subset of such a universal set would be a member of it
- capacity booking — a time when someone has booked the whole of a venue or the maximum amount of something available
- cape cod cottage — a rectangular house one or one-and-one-half stories high, with a gable roof
- cape cod lighter — a device for lighting a fire, as in a fireplace, consisting of a lump of nonflammable material on a metal rod, that is soaked in kerosene or the like and lighted with a match.
- capillary action — Also called capillary action, capillary attraction. Physics. a manifestation of surface tension by which the portion of the surface of a liquid coming in contact with a solid is elevated or depressed, depending on the adhesive or cohesive properties of the liquid.
- capillary-action — Also called capillary action, capillary attraction. Physics. a manifestation of surface tension by which the portion of the surface of a liquid coming in contact with a solid is elevated or depressed, depending on the adhesive or cohesive properties of the liquid.
- capital employed — the money used by a business for buying land, buildings, equipment etc
- capital movement — the payments that flow between countries
- capitation grant — a grant of money given to every person who qualifies under certain conditions
- capsizing moment — the moment of an upsetting couple.
- carbon footprint — Your carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by your activities over a particular period.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
- carnot principle — the principle that no heat engine can be more efficient than one operating on a Carnot cycle of reversible changes
- carpatho-ukraine — a region in W Ukraine: ceded by Czechoslovakia in 1945.
- carpenter gothic — (sometimes initial capital letters) a style of Victorian Gothic architecture adapted to the resources of contemporary woodworking tools and machinery.
- cartographically — the production of maps, including construction of projections, design, compilation, drafting, and reproduction.
- castor-oil plant — a tall euphorbiaceous Indian plant, Ricinus communis, cultivated in tropical regions for ornament and for its poisonous seeds, from which castor oil is extracted
- catastrophically — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
- category planner — A category planner is a person whose job to plan and co-ordinate future inventory and sales volume in one or more product categories.
- central european — involving or denoting the people, countries, cultures, or languages of Central Europe
- cervera y topete — Pascual [pahs-kwahl] /pɑsˈkwɑl/ (Show IPA), 1839–1909, Spanish admiral.
- chattel personal — an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
- chemoautotrophic — producing organic matter by the use of energy obtained by oxidation of certain chemicals with carbon dioxide as the carbon source
- chemotherapeutic — of or used in chemotherapy
- chernobyl packet — (networking) /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, named in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ethernet address and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet.
- chipped potatoes — chips
- chlorophenothane — DDT.
- cholecystography — radiography of the gall bladder after administration of a contrast medium