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18-letter words containing b, r, a, c, e, l

  • cepheid (variable) — any of a class of pulsating, yellow, supergiant stars whose brightness varies in regular periods: from the period-luminosity relation, the distance of such a star can be determined
  • cereal leaf beetle — an Old World leaf beetle, Oulema melanopus, introduced into North America in 1962: a serious pest of small grains, especially oats and cereal grasses.
  • cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
  • chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
  • character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
  • chlorobromomethane — a clear, colorless, volatile, nonflammable liquid, CH 2 ClBr, used chiefly as an extinguishing agent in fire extinguishers and as a solvent in organic synthesis.
  • 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
  • clay-colored robin — any of several small Old World birds having a red or reddish breast, especially Erithacus rubecula, of Europe.
  • 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
  • complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
  • controllable-pitch — (of a marine or aircraft propeller) having blades whose pitch can be changed during navigation or flight; variable-pitch.
  • cool as a cucumber — very calm; self-possessed
  • credibility rating — a supposed measure of how far a person can be believed or trusted
  • cumberland plateau — division of the W Appalachians, extending from S W.Va. to N Ala.
  • decachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) The fully chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyl containing ten chlorine atoms.
  • diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
  • dominican republic — a republic in the West Indies, occupying the E part of the island of Hispaniola. 19,129 sq. mi. (49,545 sq. km). Capital: Santo Domingo.
  • 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
  • electronic mailbox — a device used to store electronic mail
  • electrovalent bond — a type of chemical bond in which one atom loses an electron to form a positive ion and the other atom gains the electron to form a negative ion. The resulting ions are held together by electrostatic attraction
  • established church — a Church that is officially recognized as a national institution, esp the Church of England
  • forward compatible — forward compatibility
  • 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.
  • golden bantam corn — a horticultural variety of sweet corn having yellow kernels.
  • gooseneck barnacle — goose barnacle
  • handkerchief table — corner table.
  • handlebar mustache — A handlebar mustache is a long thick mustache with curled ends.
  • hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
  • incremental backup — (operating system)   A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
  • 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.
  • interchangeability — (of two things) capable of being put or used in the place of each other: interchangeable symbols.
  • irreconcilableness — The quality of being irreconcilable; irreconcilability; incompatibility; incongruity.
  • irreproachableness — The quality or state of being irreproachable; integrity; innocence.
  • 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
  • kentucky bluegrass — a grass, Poa pratensis, of the Mississippi valley, used for pasturage and lawns.
  • knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
  • labeled bracketing — a representation of the constituent structure of a string, as a word or sentence, comparable to a tree diagram, in which each constituent is shown in brackets and given a subscript grammatical label, with each bracketed item corresponding to a node in a tree diagram.
  • lambeth conference — a convention of the bishops of the Anglican communion, held about every 10 years at Lambeth Palace to confer but not to define doctrine or to legislate on ecclesiastical matters.
  • lawrence of arabia — D(avid) H(erbert) 1885–1930, English novelist.
  • leatherback turtle — a sea turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, having the shell embedded in a leathery skin, reaching a length of more than 7 feet (2.1 meter) and a weight of more than 1000 pounds (450 kg): the largest living sea turtle; an endangered species.
  • legislative branch — the branch of government having the power to make laws; the legislature.
  • 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.
  • lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
  • metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
  • mordovian republic — a constituent republic of W central Russia, in the middle Volga basin. Capital: Saransk. Pop: 888 700 (2002). Area: 26 200 sq km (10 110 sq miles)
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