16-letter words containing b, a, g, n
- deoxyhaemoglobin — (biochemistry) The form of haemoglobin that has released its oxygen.
- disagreeableness — (uncountable) The state or quality of being disagreeable.
- discombobulating — Present participle of discombobulate.
- division algebra — a linear algebra in which each element of the vector space has a multiplicative inverse.
- double-breasting — the practice of employing nonunion workers, especially in a separate division, to supplement the work of higher-paid union workers.
- draw the longbow — to exaggerate in telling something
- eastern kingbird — any of several American tyrant flycatchers of the genus Tyrannus, especially T. tyrannus (eastern kingbird) of North America, known for their pugnacious disposition toward predators.
- eclipsing binary — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- economic embargo — a legal stoppage of commerce, usually taken by one nation or group of nations to harm the economy of another nation or group, often to force a political change
- el camino bignum — (humour) /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". In the Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar "real" types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" - but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See bignum).
- family balancing — the choosing of the sex of a future child on the basis of how many children of each sex a family already has
- flabbergastation — (colloquial) Bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.
- flabbergastingly — Surprisingly, astonishingly or amazingly.
- flying ambulance — an aircraft used to take sick or injured people to hospital
- freeboard length — the length of a vessel, measured on the summer load line from the fore side of the stem to some part of the stern, usually the after side of the rudderpost.
- galvanic battery — battery (def 1a).
- gas blowoff line — A gas blowoff line is a safety device to control sudden increases in pressure.
- general assembly — the legislature in some states of the U.S.
- generalisability — Non-Oxford British standard spelling of generalizability.
- generalizability — The quality of being generalizable.
- gingerbread palm — doom palm.
- gingerbread plum — a tree, Neocarya macrophylla, of western Africa, bearing a large, edible, starchy fruit.
- gingerbread tree — a W African tree, Parinari macrophyllum, with large mealy edible fruits (gingerbread plums): family Chrysobalanaceae
- global community — the people or nations of the world, considered as being closely connected by modern telecommunications and as being economically, socially, and politically interdependent
- globigerina ooze — a calcareous deposit occurring upon ocean beds and consisting mainly of the shells of dead foraminifers, especially globigerina.
- go out on a limb — say sth daring
- go/be easy on sb — If you tell someone to go easy on, or be easy on, a particular person, you are telling them not to punish or treat that person very severely.
- grant of probate — a certificate stating that a will is valid
- granville-barker — Harley, 1877–1946, English dramatist, actor, and critic.
- great blue heron — a large American heron, Ardea herodias, having bluish-gray plumage.
- green vegetables — green edible plants
- grin and bear it — to suffer trouble or hardship without complaint
- ground substance — Also called matrix. the homogeneous substance in which the fibers and cells of connective tissue are embedded.
- growth substance — any substance, produced naturally by a plant or manufactured commercially, that, in very low concentrations, affects plant growth; a plant hormone
- gulf of martaban — an inlet of the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar
- gulf of san blas — an inlet of the Caribbean on the N coast of Panama
- hanging wardrobe — a wardrobe containing a rail with a large amount of space underneath, so that clothes can be hung on hangers placed onto the rail
- hebbian learning — (artificial intelligence) The most common way to train a neural network; a kind of unsupervised learning; named after canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O. Hebb. The algorithm is based on Hebb's Postulate, which states that where one cell's firing repeatedly contributes to the firing of another cell, the magnitude of this contribution will tend to increase gradually with time. This means that what may start as little more than a coincidental relationship between the firing of two nearby neurons becomes strongly causal. Despite limitations with Hebbian learning, e.g., the inability to learn certain patterns, variations such as Signal Hebbian Learning and Differential Hebbian Learning are still used.
- hemangioblastoma — (medicine) Any of several benign neoplasm tumours of the brain.
- herringbone gear — a helical gear having teeth that lie on the pitch cylinder in a V -shaped form so that one half of each tooth is on a right-handed helix and the other half on a left-handed helix.
- horseback riding — activity: riding a horse
- huntington beach — a city in SW California, SE of Los Angeles.
- imaginary number — Also called imaginary, pure imaginary number. a complex number having its real part equal to zero.
- indefatigability — incapable of being tired out; not yielding to fatigue; untiring.
- inextinguishable — not extinguishable: an inextinguishable fire.
- inextinguishably — In a way that cannot be extinguished; immortally.
- interest-bearing — paying interest
- into the bargain — an advantageous purchase, especially one acquired at less than the usual cost: The sale offered bargains galore.
- irrefragableness — The quality or degree of being irrefragable.
- jacobson's organ — either of a pair of blind, tubular, olfactory sacs in the roof of the mouth, vestigial in humans but well-developed in many animals, especially reptiles.