18-letter words containing b, a, c, i, l
- carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
- carisbrooke castle — a castle near Newport on the Isle of Wight: Charles I was held prisoner here from 1647 until his execution in 1649
- cepheid (variable) — any of a class of pulsating, yellow, supergiant stars whose brightness varies in regular periods: from the period-luminosity relation, the distance of such a star can be determined
- cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
- cheval de bataille — a horse used in battle; charger.
- circular breathing — a technique for sustaining a phrase on a wind instrument, using the cheeks to force air out of the mouth while breathing in through the nose
- claustrophobically — In a claustrophobic way.
- clay-colored robin — any of several small Old World birds having a red or reddish breast, especially Erithacus rubecula, of Europe.
- climbing hydrangea — a woody vine, Hydrangea anomala, of eastern Asia, having shiny, egg-shaped leaves and flat-topped white flower clusters, and climbing by aerial rootlets.
- clobbering machine — pressure to conform with accepted standards
- cobalt violet deep — a medium to strong purple color.
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- controllable-pitch — (of a marine or aircraft propeller) having blades whose pitch can be changed during navigation or flight; variable-pitch.
- credibility rating — a supposed measure of how far a person can be believed or trusted
- debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
- decachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) The fully chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyl containing ten chlorine atoms.
- diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- distribution class — form class
- dominican republic — a republic in the West Indies, occupying the E part of the island of Hispaniola. 19,129 sq. mi. (49,545 sq. km). Capital: Santo Domingo.
- double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
- eclipsing variable — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
- electronic mailbox — a device used to store electronic mail
- established church — a Church that is officially recognized as a national institution, esp the Church of England
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- fascicular cambium — cambium that develops within the vascular bundles, producing secondary xylem and phloem.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- handkerchief table — corner table.
- hebdomadal council — the governing council or senate of Oxford University
- hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
- histocompatibility — the condition of having antigenic similarities such that cells or tissues transplanted from one (the donor) to another (the recipient) are not rejected.
- in black and white — without colour
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
- incremental backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
- indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
- intensional object — the object of a propositional attitude that may or may not exist, as in Robert is dreaming of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This must be an intensional (or opaque) context, for otherwise, since there is no pot of gold, Robert would be dreaming of nothing
- interchangeability — (of two things) capable of being put or used in the place of each other: interchangeable symbols.
- irreconcilableness — The quality of being irreconcilable; irreconcilability; incompatibility; incongruity.
- irreproachableness — The quality or state of being irreproachable; integrity; innocence.
- isabella of france — 1292–1358, wife (1308–27) of Edward II of England, whom, aided by her lover, Roger de Mortimer, she deposed; mother of Edward III
- jacksonville beach — a city in NE Florida.
- jacobite rebellion — the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1715 led by James Francis Edward Stuart
- job classification — an arrangement of different types of employment within a company or industry, according to the skill, experience, or training required.
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- labeled bracketing — a representation of the constituent structure of a string, as a word or sentence, comparable to a tree diagram, in which each constituent is shown in brackets and given a subscript grammatical label, with each bracketed item corresponding to a node in a tree diagram.