17-letter words containing b, r, e, c
- 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.
- cross the rubicon — If you say that someone has crossed the Rubicon, you mean that they have reached a point where they cannot change a decision or course of action.
- cry in one's beer — to lament or complain in a maudlin manner
- 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)
- debt rescheduling — the process of changing the time frame or deadline for the repayment of debt, usually to ease the burden on the debtor
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- desoxyribonucleic — Alternative spelling of deoxyribonucleic.
- dietrich von bern — Theodoric of Verona: the name of the eastern Gothic emperor Theodoric as it appears in German legends.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- distributed force — A distributed force is a force that acts on a large part of a surface, not just on one place.
- distributed logic — a computer system in which remote terminals and electronic devices, distributed throughout the system, supplement the main computer by doing some of the computing or decision making
- 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 gloucester — a type of smooth orange-red cheese of mild flavour
- 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.
- 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
- executive burnout — a total loss of energy and interest and an inability to function effectively, experienced by some executives as a result of excessive demands upon their resources or chronic overwork
- exhibition centre — a large building in which major trade fairs are held
- 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.
- 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
- globus hystericus — the sensation of having a lump in the throat or difficulty in swallowing for which no medical cause can be found.
- green book cd-rom — A standard CD-ROM format developed by Philips for CD-i. It is ISO 9660 compliant and uses mode 2 form 2 addressing. It can only be played on drives which are XA (Extended Architecture) compatible. Many Green Book discs contain CD-i applications which can only be played on a CD-i player but many others contain films or music videos. Video CDs in Green Book format are normally labelled "Digital Video on CD" Green Book was obsoleted by White book CD-ROM in March 1994.
- hard-shelled crab — a crab, esp. an edible sea crab, before it has shed its hard shell
- hasbrouck heights — a borough in NE New Jersey.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- herbaceous border — A herbaceous border is a flower bed containing a mixture of plants that flower every year.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- hornblende schist — a variety of schist containing needles of hornblende that lie in parallel planes.
- humpbacked bridge — A humpbacked bridge or humpback bridge is a short and very curved bridge with a shape similar to a semi-circle.
- hybrid fiber coax — (networking) (HFC) A kind of physical connection used in networks for audio, video, and data. DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) is used in Europe and DOCSIS is used in N America.
- hyperbolic cosine — one of a group of functions of an angle expressed as a relationship between the distances of a point on a hyperbola to the origin and to the coordinate axes; cosh
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperbolic spiral — rθ = a, (where a is a constant)
- hyperexcitability — an excessive reaction to stimuli.
- iambic pentameter — a verse line consisting of five metrical iambs
- impracticableness — The state of being impracticable; impracticability.
- in the background — behind the focus of attention
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- incubation period — the period between infection and the appearance of signs of a disease.
- indecipherability — Quality of being indecipherable.