15-letter words containing a, t, s, b, c
- discombobulated — to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
- discombobulates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of discombobulate.
- disjecta membra — scattered fragments, esp parts taken from a writing or writings
- display cabinet — a cabinet in a shop, museum, etc, that displays items
- distractibility — inability to sustain one's attention or attentiveness, which is rapidly diverted from one topic to another: a symptom of a variety of mental disorders, as manic disorder, schizophrenia, or anxiety states.
- distributor cap — the cap of an engine's distributor that holds in place the wires from the distributor to the sparking plugs
- dorsibranchiate — having branchiae or gills along the back
- elastic rebound — a theory of earthquakes that envisages gradual deformation of the fault zone without fault slippage until friction is overcome, when the fault suddenly slips to produce the earthquake
- eta abstraction — eta conversion
- eustachian tube — part of the ear
- extension cable — an extra length of cable with a plug and a connector that can be added to an electric lead
- fabric softener — a substance added to fabrics during laundering to make them puffier and softer.
- false buckthorn — a spiny shrub or small tree, Bumelia lanuginosa, of the sapodilla family, native to the southern U.S., having gummy, milky sap and white, bell-shaped flowers and yielding a hard, light-brown wood.
- fibrocartilages — Plural form of fibrocartilage.
- flatbed scanner — a type of optical scanner having a flat, stationary surface on which a page is scanned by a moving head.
- francis turbine — a water turbine designed to produce high flow from a low head of pressure: used esp in hydroelectric power generation
- gastric balloon — an inflatable rubber bag placed in the stomach to reduce its capacity as an aid to losing weight
- hoosier cabinet — a tall kitchen cabinet mass-produced during the early part of the 20th century, usually of oak, featuring an enameled work surface, storage bins, a flour sifter, etc.
- hubble constant — the ratio of the recessional velocity of galaxies to their distance from the sun, with current measurements of its value ranging from 50 to 100 km/sec per megaparsec.
- hypercatabolism — an abnormally high metabolic breakdown of a substance or tissue which leads to weight loss and physical deterioration
- imprescriptable — Alt form imprescriptible.
- in the abstract — When you talk or think about something in the abstract, you talk or think about it in a general way, rather than considering particular things or events.
- inaccessibility — not accessible; unapproachable.
- incompatibilism — (philosophy) The doctrine that free will and determinism are incompatible, that one necessarily precludes the other.
- inconsolability — not able to be comforted or consoled; disconsolate: She was inconsolable when her son died.
- inscrutableness — Inscrutability.
- intractableness — The state of being intractable; intractability.
- label switching — (networking) A routing technique that uses information from existing IP routing protocols to identify IP datagrams with labels and forwards them to a modified switch or router, which then uses the labels to switch the datagrams through the network. Label switching combines the best attributes of data link layer (layer two) switching (as in ATM and Frame Relay) with the best attributes of network layer (layer three) routing (as in IP). Prior to the formation of the MPLS Working Group in 1997, a number of vendors had announced and/or implemented proprietary label switching.
- ladies'-tobacco — pussy-toes.
- luncheon basket — a basket that you put food in and take somewhere for a picnic
- microsoft basic — (language) (MS-BASIC) A dialect of BASIC from Microsoft, originally developed by Bill Gates in a garage back in the CP/M days. It was originally known as GWBasic, then QBASIC and finally MS-BASIC. When the MS-DOS operating system came out, it incorporated the GWBASIC.EXE or BASICA.EXE interpreters. GWBASIC ("Gee Whiz") incorporated graphics and a screen editor and was compatible with earlier BASICs. QBASIC was more sophisticated. Version 4.5 had a full screen editor, debugger and compiler. The compiler could also produce executable files but to run these a utility program (BRUN44.EXE) had to be present. Thus source code could be kept private. From DOS 5.0 or 6.0 onward, MS-BASIC was standard. Version 1.1 produced stand-alone executables and could display graphics.
- monosyllabicity — The state or characteristic of being monosyllabic.
- mount suribachi — a volcanic hill in the Volcano Islands, on Iwo Jima: site of a US victory (1945) over the Japanese in World War II
- myofibroblastic — Relating to myofibroblasts.
- neck sweetbread — sweetbread (def 2).
- object database — a database format in which information is shown in the form of objects
- object distance — the distance between the lens of a camera and an object being photographed.
- observation car — a railroad passenger car having a lounge or platform from which the scenery can be viewed.
- obstacle course — a military training area having obstacles, as hurdles, ditches, and walls, that must be surmounted or crossed in succession.
- parti québécois — (in Canada) a political party in Quebec, formed in 1968 and originally advocating the separation of Quebec from the rest of the country
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- procrustean bed — a plan or scheme to produce uniformity or conformity by arbitrary or violent methods.
- quasi-objective — something that one's efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish; purpose; goal; target: the objective of a military attack; the objective of a fund-raising drive.
- queen substance — a pheromone secreted from the mandibular glands of a queen honeybee and smelled, eaten, and absorbed by the worker bees, having the effect of preventing them from producing or rearing rival queens.
- radio broadcast — sth transmitted via radio signal
- ratafia biscuit — a macaroon.
- reconstitutable — to constitute again; reconstruct; recompose.
- robert guiscard — Robert [French raw-ber] /French rɔˈbɛr/ (Show IPA), (Robert de Hauteville) c1015–85, Norman conqueror in Italy.
- rusty blackbird — a North American blackbird, Euphagus carolinus, the male of which has plumage that is uniformly bluish-black in the spring and rusty-edged in the fall.
- sabbatical year — Also called sabbatical leave. (in a school, college, university, etc.) a year, usually every seventh, of release from normal teaching duties granted to a professor, as for study or travel.