18-letter words containing b, a, g, n
- cabernet sauvignon — a black grape originally grown in the Bordeaux area of France, and now throughout the wine-producing world
- cabinet government — parliamentary government.
- 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
- change the subject — to select a new topic of conversation
- character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
- 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
- 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
- connected subgraph — (mathematics) A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
- credibility rating — a supposed measure of how far a person can be believed or trusted
- cyrano de bergerac — Savinien (savinjɛ̃). 1619–55, French writer and soldier, famous as a duellist and for his large nose. He became widely known through the verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) by Edmond Rostand
- distinguishability — to mark off as different (often followed by from or by): He was distinguished from the other boys by his height.
- dressing table set — a set including a hairbrush, mirror and comb, often with silver backs
- 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
- engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- furnishing fabrics — fabrics used to make and cover furniture
- gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
- gamal abdel nasser — Gamal Abdel [guh-mahl ab-doo l,, juh-] /gəˈmɑl ˈæb dʊl,, dʒə-/ (Show IPA), 1918–70, Egyptian military and political leader: prime minister of Egypt 1954–56; president of Egypt 1956–58; president of the United Arab Republic 1958–70.
- gamblers anonymous — an organization that holds group meetings to help people who are addicted to gambling
- gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
- 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.
- gas-permeable lens — a semisoft contact lens, usually removed each day, that allows air to pass through to the eye and affords a wider range of vision corrections than a soft contact lens.
- get one's own back — of, relating to, or belonging to oneself or itself (usually used after a possessive to emphasize the idea of ownership, interest, or relation conveyed by the possessive): He spent only his own money.
- gilbert and george — a team of artists, Gilbert Proesch, Italian, born 1942, and George Passmore, British, born 1943: noted esp for their photomontages and performance works
- gladden sb's heart — If you say that something gladdens someone's heart, you mean that it makes them feel pleased and hopeful.
- golden bantam corn — a horticultural variety of sweet corn having yellow kernels.
- golden gate bridge — a bridge connecting N California with San Francisco peninsula. 4200-foot (1280-meter) center span.
- golden-brown algae — a group of mostly marine, motile algae of the phylum Chlorophyta, characterized by the presence of the pigments chlorophyll, carotene, and xanthophyll, which impart golden to yellow-brown colors.
- good/not bad going — If you say that something that has been achieved is good going or not bad going, you mean that it is better than usual or than expected.
- gooseneck barnacle — goose barnacle
- grand traverse bay — an inlet of Lake Michigan on the NW of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
- great pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
- green-backed heron — a small, American heron, Butorides striatus, having glossy green wings.
- grumbling appendix — a condition in which the appendix causes intermittent pain but appendicitis has not developed
- hardy-weinberg law — a principle stating that in an infinitely large, randomly mating population in which selection, migration, and mutation do not occur, the frequencies of alleles and genotypes do not change from generation to generation.
- have a thing about — If you have a thing about someone or something, you have very strong feelings about them.
- herring bone weave — a pattern consisting of adjoining vertical rows of slanting lines, any two contiguous lines forming either a V or an inverted V , used in masonry, textiles, embroidery, etc.
- highbush cranberry — a shrub, Viburnum trilobum, of northern North America, having broad clusters of white flowers and edible scarlet berries.
- in good/bad repair — If something such as a building is in good repair, it is in good condition. If it is in bad repair, it is in bad condition.
- in-band signalling — (communications) (Or CAS, channel associated signaling) Transmission of control signals in the same channel as data. This is commonly used in the Public Switched Telephone Network where the same pair of wires carry both voice and control signals (e.g. dialling, ringing). Another example is the use on a computer serial line of Control-S and Control-Q characters for flow control as opposed to hardware flow control which would be out-of-band signalling. In digital communications, in-band signalling often uses "bit-robbing" where, for example, one bit in each frame is used for signalling instead of data. This is the reason why a D1 channel in the T-carrier system can only carry 56 Kbps of usable data instead of the 64 Kbps carried by the D0 channel in the E-carrier system.
- interchangeability — (of two things) capable of being put or used in the place of each other: interchangeable symbols.
- intimate borrowing — the borrowing of linguistic forms by one language or dialect from another when both occupy a single geographical or cultural community.
- invisible earnings — earnings from services provided rather than goods
- johannes gutenberg — Johannes [yoh-hahn-uh s] /yoʊˈhɑn əs/ (Show IPA), (Johann Gensfleisch) c1400–68, German printer: credited with invention of printing from movable type.
- kentucky bluegrass — a grass, Poa pratensis, of the Mississippi valley, used for pasturage and lawns.
- knight of the bath — a member of a knightly order founded by George I of England in 1725.