18-letter words containing b, i, o, r, e
- 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
- elizabeth petrovna — 1709-62; empress of Russia (1741-62): daughter of Peter I
- embryonic membrane — any of several living membranes enclosing or closely associated with the developing vertebrate embryo, as the allantois, amnion, yolk sac, etc.
- fabric conditioner — a product used when washing clothes to make them feel softer
- file control block — (operating system) (FCB) An MS-DOS data structure that stores information about an open file. The number of FCBs is configured in CONFIG.SYS with a command FCBS=x,y where x (between 1 and 255 inclusive, default 4) specifies the number of file control blocks to allocate and therefore the number of files that MS-DOS can have open at one time. y (not needed from DOS 5.0 onward) specifies the number of files to be closed automatically if all x are in use.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire in your belly — If you say that someone has fire in their belly, you are expressing approval of them because they are energetic, enthusiastic, and have very strong feelings.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
- for the time being — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
- 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.
- 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
- golden gate bridge — a bridge connecting N California with San Francisco peninsula. 4200-foot (1280-meter) center span.
- hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
- have words with sb — If one person has words with another, or if two or more people have words, they have a serious discussion or argument, especially because one has complained about the other's behaviour.
- hermaphrodite brig — a two-masted sailing vessel, square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft-rigged on the mainmast.
- 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.
- herringbone stitch — a type of cross-stitch in embroidery similar to the catch stitch in sewing, consisting of an overlapped V -shaped stitch that when worked in a continuous pattern produces a twill-weave effect.
- hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
- honorable ordinary — any of the ordinaries believed to be among those that are oldest or that were the source of the other ordinaries, as the chief, pale, fess, bend, chevron, cross, and saltire.
- honourable mention — If something that you do in a competition is given an honourable mention, it receives special praise from the judges although it does not actually win a prize.
- hypophysis cerebri — the master endocrine gland, attached by a stalk to the base of the brain.
- impressionableness — The quality of being impressionable.
- 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.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
- indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
- 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.
- information bureau — an office where you can go to get information
- informatory double — a double intended to inform one's partner that one has a strong hand and to urge a bid regardless of the strength of his or her hand.
- interbroker dealer — a specialist who matches the needs of different market makers and facilitates dealings between them
- interdealer broker — an agent who is paid a commission to bring buyers and sellers together
- intimate borrowing — the borrowing of linguistic forms by one language or dialect from another when both occupy a single geographical or cultural community.
- ionization chamber — a device for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation, consisting of a tube containing a low pressure gas and two electrodes between which a high voltage is maintained. The current between the electrodes is a function of the intensity of the radiation
- irreconcilableness — The quality of being irreconcilable; irreconcilability; incompatibility; incongruity.
- irreproachableness — The quality or state of being irreproachable; integrity; innocence.
- irresponsibilities — said, done, or characterized by a lack of a sense of responsibility: His refusal to work shows him to be completely irresponsible.
- 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
- jacobite rebellion — the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1715 led by James Francis Edward Stuart
- john birch society — an ultraconservative organization, founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, Jr., chiefly to combat alleged Communist activities in the U.S.
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- labrador retriever — one of a breed of retrievers having a short, thick, oily, solid black or yellow coat, raised originally in Newfoundland.
- lawrence of arabia — D(avid) H(erbert) 1885–1930, English novelist.
- linear combination — a sum of products of each quantity times a constant: The expression aX + bY + cZ is a linear combination of X, Y, and Z, where a, b, and c are constants.
- loschmidt's number — the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure, equal to 2.687 × 10 19.
- macroinvertebrates — Plural form of macroinvertebrate.