19-letter words containing b, l
- own flesh and blood — If you say that someone is your own flesh and blood, you are emphasizing that they are a member of your family.
- oxyacetylene burner — a blowpipe for cutting or welding metals at high temperatures
- palaeoethnobotanist — someone who studies fossil seeds and grains to further archaeological knowledge, esp of the domestication of cereals
- palomar observatory — an astronomical observatory situated on Palomar Mountain in S California, having a 200-inch (508-cm) reflecting telescope and a 48-inch (122-cm) Schmidt telescope.
- papal infallibility — the dogma that the pope cannot err in a solemn teaching addressed to the whole church on a matter of faith or morals.
- paradichlorobenzene — a white, crystalline, volatile, water-insoluble solid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , of the benzene series, having a penetrating odor: used chiefly as a moth repellent.
- parliament building — structure housing legislative offices
- party-column ballot — Indiana ballot.
- patrol torpedo boat — PT boat.
- perfoliate bellwort — a slender plant, Uvularia perfoliata, of the lily family, of eastern North America, having pale yellow, bell-shaped flowers.
- peridental membrane — periodontal membrane.
- perpetual debenture — a bond or debenture that can either never be redeemed or cannot be redeemed on demand
- personal belongings — possessions; things that belong to someone
- phenylthiocarbamide — a crystalline, slightly water-soluble solid, C 6 H 5 NHCSNH 2 , that is either tasteless or bitter, depending upon the heredity of the taster, and is used in medical genetics and as a diagnostic.
- phthalocyanine blue — a pigment used in painting, derived from copper phthalocyanine and characterized chiefly by its brilliant, dark-blue color and by permanence.
- pointe-aux-trembles — a city in S Quebec, in E Canada, N of Montreal, on the St. Lawrence.
- polycarboxylic acid — a type of carboxylic acid containing two or more carboxyl groups
- polyclonal antibody — a mixture of antibodies of different specificities, as in the serum of a person immunized to various antigens.
- portobello mushroom — a dark mushroom, strong in flavor, having a broad, flat cap that is often grilled and eaten
- post office problem — (algorithm) Given a set of points (in N dimensions), find another point which minimises the sum of the distances from that point to each of the others.
- postal savings bank — any of the savings banks formerly operated by local post offices and limited to small accounts.
- potassium bisulfate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KHSO 4 , used chiefly in the conversion of tartrates to bitartrates.
- profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
- provably unsolvable — The set or property of problems for which no algorithm at all exists. E.g. the Halting Problem. See also provably difficult.
- pseudo-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- public intellectual — an intellectual, often a noted specialist in a particular field, who has become well-known to the general public for a willingness to comment on current affairs
- public-interest law — a branch of law that often utilizes class-action suits to protect the interest of a large group or of the public at large, as in matters relating to racial discrimination, air pollution, etc.
- public-opinion poll — a poll taken by sampling a cross section of the public in an effort to predict election results or to estimate public attitudes on issues.
- rag-tag and bobtail — the riffraff; rabble: The ragtag and bobtail of every nation poured into the frontier in search of gold.
- redress the balance — to make a fair adjustment; see that justice is done
- refreshable display — braille display
- registered disabled — on a local authority register under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970
- relational database — an electronic database comprising multiple files of related information, usually stored in tables of rows (records) and columns (fields), and allowing a link to be established between separate files that have a matching field, as a column of invoice numbers, so that the two files can be queried simultaneously by the user.
- removable cartridge — a hard disk enclosed in a case that can be removed from the disk drive, having more storage than floppy disks.
- removable hard disk — (storage) A type of magnetic disk, or possibly magneto-optical disk which is not permanently attached to the disk drive (not a fixed disk) but which can be taken out and replaced, allowing many disks to be used in the same drive. The term "removable disk" would seem to be applicable to floppy disks but is generally reserved for hard disks in suitable cartridges such as those made by Syquest, Iomega and others. Removable disk packs were common on minicomputers such as the PDP-11 in use in the 1970s except that the drives were the size of washing machines and the disk packs as big as car wheels. Removable disks became popular on microcomputers in the 1990s as a cheap way of expanding disk space, transporting large amounts of data between computers and storing backups. Large, cheap fixed hard disks and USB memory sticks have made removable disks less attractive.
- republic of ireland — John, 1838–1918, U.S. Roman Catholic clergyman and social reformer, born in Ireland: archbishop of St. Paul, Minn., 1888–1918.
- republic of letters — the collective body of literary people.
- republic of vietnam — the name (from 1955–75) for South Vietnam, as an independent republic, following the division of the country in 1954 into North Vietnam and South Vietnam
- republique malgache — French name of Malagasy Republic.
- research laboratory — place for scientific experimentation
- reversible reaction — a reaction that, depending on ambient conditions, can proceed in either of two directions: the production of the reaction products from the reactants, or the production of the original reactants from the formed reaction products. Compare equilibrium (def 4).
- ring someone's bell — a hollow instrument of cast metal, typically cup-shaped with a flaring mouth, suspended from the vertex and rung by the strokes of a clapper, hammer, or the like.
- saddle-billed stork — a large stork, Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis, of West Africa, having a white and black body and a long, red and black bill.
- sale and lease back — leaseback.
- sb's spiritual home — your spiritual home is the place where you feel that you belong, usually because your ideas or attitudes are the same as those of the people who live there
- seat belt tensioner — A seat belt tensioner is a device in a vehicle that pulls a seat belt tight if there is a sudden movement or stop.
- self-responsibility — the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management.
- semibituminous coal — a coal intermediate between bituminous and anthracite coal in hardness, yielding the maximum heat of any ordinary steam coal.
- seminiferous tubule — any of the coiled tubules of the testis in which spermatozoa are produced.
- semisubmersible rig — Also called semisubmersible rig. a self-propelled barge that is mounted on partially submerged legs supported by underwater pontoons, rides at anchor, and serves as a work base and living quarters in deep offshore drilling operations.