17-letter words containing b, e, y
- budgetary deficit — the amount by which government expenditure exceeds income from taxation, customs duties, etc, in any one fiscal year
- bull's-eye mirror — a circular, convex, ornamental mirror.
- bull's-eye window — bull's-eye (def 7).
- bury the tomahawk — to stop fighting; make peace
- butterfly bandage — a butterfly-shaped strip of adhesive medical tape used, when stitches are not required, to keep a deep cut or incision tightly closed while it heals
- butterfly closure — an adhesive bandage resembling the shape of a butterfly's outstretched wings, used for closing minor cuts.
- butterfly diagram — a graphical butterfly-shaped representation of the sunspot density on the solar disc in the 11-year sunspot cycle
- buyers' inflation — inflation in which rising demand results in a rise in prices.
- by return of post — by the next mail in the opposite direction
- by the same token — You use by the same token to introduce a statement that you think is true for the same reasons that were given for a previous statement.
- cabbage butterfly — a common white butterfly (Pieris rapae) whose green larvae feed upon cabbage and related plants
- call-by-reference — (programming) An argument passing convention where the address of an argument variable is passed to a function or procedure, as opposed to passing the value of the argument expression. Execution of the function or procedure may have side-effects on the actual argument as seen by the caller. The C language's "&" (address of) and "*" (dereference) operators allow the programmer to code explicit call-by-reference. Other languages provide special syntax to declare reference arguments (e.g. ALGOL 60). See also call-by-name, call-by-value, call-by-value-result.
- camberwell beauty — a nymphalid butterfly, Nymphalis antiopa, of temperate regions, having dark purple wings with cream-yellow borders
- canarybird flower — a nasturtium, Tropaeolum peregrinum, of Peru, having round, deeply lobed leaves and yellow flowers.
- carbonyl chloride — phosgene
- carboxyhemoglobin — a compound formed in the blood when carbon monoxide occupies the positions on the hemoglobin molecule normally taken by oxygen, resulting in cellular oxygen starvation
- celebrity wedding — a wedding of famous people, usually reported at length in celebrity magazines
- chicklet keyboard — (spelling) It's spelled "chiclet keyboard".
- churchyard beetle — a blackish nocturnal ground beetle, Blaps mucronata, found in cellars and similar places
- comprehensibility — capable of being comprehended or understood; intelligible.
- contingency table — an array having the frequency of occurrence of certain events in each of a number of samples
- cry in one's beer — to lament or complain in a maudlin manner
- 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
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- desoxyribonucleic — Alternative spelling of deoxyribonucleic.
- dibutyl phthalate — a colorless oily liquid, C 16 H 22 O 4 , insoluble in water, used as a solvent, insect repellent, and plasticizer.
- differentiability — The ability to be differentiated.
- 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.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- double pair royal — a set of four cards of the same denomination, worth 12 points.
- downwardly mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- downwardly-mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- drive-by download — an incidence of an unwanted program being automatically downloaded to a computer, often without the user's knowledge
- drive-by shooting — an incident in which a person, building, or vehicle is shot at by someone in a moving vehicle
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- 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
- embroidery thread — a thread used for embroidery
- employee benefits — benefits, such as health insurance, pension payments, or childcare, given to employees in addition to their usual salary or wage
- eyelet embroidery — a piece of embroidery decorated with such work
- feasibility study — (systems analysis) Part of the systems develpment life cycle which aims to determine whether it is sensible to develop some system. The most popular model of feasibility study is "TELOS", standing for Technical, Economic, Legal, Operational, Schedule. Technical Feasibility: does the technology exist to implement the proposed system? Is it a practical proposition? Economic Feasibility: is the system cost-effective? Do benefits outweigh costs? Legal Feasibility: is there any conflict between the proposed system and legal requirements, e.g. the Data Protection Act? Operational Feasibility: are the current work practices and procedures adequate to support the new system? Schedule Feasibility: can the system be developed in time? After the feasibility study, the requirements analysis should be carried out.
- four-rowed barley — a class of barley having, in each spike, six rows of grain, with two pairs of rows overlapping.
- free-body diagram — A free-body diagram is a diagram of a structure in which all supports are replaced by forces.
- 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
- gamma-ray burster — a source of gamma-ray bursts
- garden strawberry — a plant which has white flowers and red edible fruits and is spread by runners, Fragaria ananassa
- gibbs free energy — the thermodynamic function of a system that is equal to its enthalpy minus the product of its absolute temperture and entropy: a decrease in the function is equal to the maximum amount of work available exclusive of that due to pressure times volume change during a reversible, isothermal, isobaric process.
- globus hystericus — the sensation of having a lump in the throat or difficulty in swallowing for which no medical cause can be found.
- go by the wayside — to be put aside on account of something more urgent
- haemoglobinopathy — (medicine) Any of a group of inherited disorders in which haemoglobin does not function properly.