17-letter words containing b, e, c, a
- cinisello balsamo — a city in N Italy, near Milan.
- cistern barometer — a mercury barometer in which the lower mercury surface has a greater area than the upper.
- civil libertarian — a person who actively supports or works for the protection or expansion of civil liberties.
- clare boothe luce — Clare Boothe, 1903–87, U.S. writer, politician, and diplomat.
- class-b amplifier — an electronic amplifier in which the output flows for half of the input signal cycle
- clear box testing — white box testing
- climbing accident — an accident occurring during climbing
- clumber (spaniel) — a short-legged spaniel with a heavy body and a thick coat of straight, white hair marked with yellow or orange
- code of behaviour — the generally accepted rules governing how people behave
- code of hammurabi — a Babylonian legal code of the 18th century b.c. or earlier, instituted by Hammurabi and dealing with criminal and civil matters.
- coffee-table book — A coffee-table book is a large expensive book with a lot of pictures, which is designed to be looked at rather than to be read properly, and is usually placed where people can see it easily.
- coliform bacteria — a large group of bacteria inhabiting the intestinal tract of humans and animals that may cause disease and whose presence in water is an indicator of faecal pollution
- collaborativeness — Quality of being collaborative.
- colour subcarrier — a component of a colour television signal on which is modulated the colour or chrominance information
- combe-capelle man — a skeleton of the early Upper Paleolithic Perigordian culture in France.
- combine harvester — A combine harvester is a large machine which is used on farms to cut, sort, and clean grain.
- companionableness — The state or quality of being companionable.
- congo-brazzaville — a republic in W Central Africa: formerly the French colony of Middle Congo, part of French Equatorial Africa, it became independent in 1960; consists mostly of equatorial forest, with savanna and extensive swamps; drained chiefly by the Rivers Congo and Ubangi. Official language: French. Religion: Christian majority. Currency: franc. Capital: Brazzaville. Pop: 4 492 689 (2013 est). Area: 342 000 sq km (132 018 sq miles)
- contingency table — an array having the frequency of occurrence of certain events in each of a number of samples
- contrasuggestible — responding or tending to respond to a suggestion by doing or believing the opposite
- count one's beads — to pray with a rosary
- creature of habit — If you say that someone is a creature of habit, you mean that they usually do the same thing at the same time each day, rather than doing new and different things.
- culpable homicide — manslaughter
- customs brokerage — the work of a customs broker
- cyrillic alphabet — the alphabet derived from that of the Greeks, supposedly by Saint Cyril, for the writing of Slavonic languages: now used primarily for Russian, Bulgarian, and the Serbian dialect of Serbo-Croat
- dagestan republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the Caspian Sea: annexed from Persia in 1813; rich mineral resources. Capital: Makhachkala. Pop: 2 584 200 (2002). Area: 50 278 sq km (19 416 sq miles)
- de-baathification — the process of removing the members and influence of the Ba'ath Party from public office in Iraq following the US-led invasion of 2003
- deathwatch beetle — a beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, whose woodboring larvae are a serious pest. The adult produces a rapid tapping sound with its head that was once popularly supposed to presage death
- deductible clause — a clause in an insurance policy stipulating that the insured will be liable for a specified initial amount of each loss, injury, etc., and that the insurance company will be liable for any additional costs up to the insured amount.
- deductive tableau — (tool) A theorem proof system consisting of a table whose rows contain assertions or goals. Variables in assertions are implicitly universally quantified and variables in goals are implicitly existentially quantified. The declarative meaning of a tableau is that if every instance of every assertion is true then some instance of at least one of the goals is true.
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- disability clause — a clause in a life-insurance policy providing for waiver of premium and sometimes payment of monthly income if the policyholder becomes totally and permanently disabled.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- doberman pinscher — one of a German breed of medium-sized, short-haired dogs having a black, brown, or blue coat with rusty brown markings.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- economic blockade — an embargo on trade with a country, esp one which prohibits receipt of exports from that country, with the intention of disrupting the country's economy
- egyptian brackets — (programming, humour) A humourous term for K&R indent style, referring to the "one hand up in front, one down behind" pose which popular culture inexplicably associates with Egypt.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- fulgencio batista — Fulgencio [fool-hen-syaw] /fulˈhɛn syɔ/ (Show IPA), (Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar) 1901–73, Cuban military leader: dictator of Cuba 1934–40; president 1940–44, 1952–59.
- gamblers' fallacy — the fallacy that in a series of chance events the probability of one event occurring increases with the number of times another event has occurred in succession
- garbage collector — refuse collector, dustman
- get one's back up — the rear part of the human body, extending from the neck to the lower end of the spine.