16-letter words containing b, r, i, s
- brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
- bronchial asthma — asthma.
- brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
- broomstick skirt — a full, gathered or pleated skirt that has characteristic tiny creases obtained by wetting the skirt and winding it around a broomstick to dry.
- brussels griffon — one of a Belgian breed of toy dogs having a thick, wiry, reddish-brown coat.
- budgie smugglers — men's close-fitting swimming trunks
- bullet-resistant — not allowing bullets to pass through
- bullock's oriole — a common oriole, Icterus galbula bullockii, of western North America: a subspecies of the northern oriole.
- burnet saxifrage — a Eurasian umbelliferous plant of the genus Pimpinella, having umbrella-like clusters of white or pink flowers
- burning question — urgent matter for discussion
- business manager — a person who ensures the running of a business by managing the work of relevant staff
- bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- cabinet minister — a minister who is a member of the cabinet
- carbon bisulfide — carbon disulfide
- carbon disulfide — a heavy, volatile, colorless liquid, CS2, highly flammable and poisonous, used as a solvent, insecticide, etc.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- cardinal numbers — Also called cardinal numeral. any of the numbers that express amount, as one, two, three, etc. (distinguished from ordinal number).
- cassia-bark tree — a lauraceous tree, Cinnamomum cassia, of eastern Asia.
- celebrity status — the prominence of film star, footballer, musician etc who is constantly photographed and written about in tabloids and magazines
- charitable trust — a trust set up for the benefit of a charity that complies with the regulations of the Charity Commissioners to enable it to be exempt from paying income tax
- cherries jubilee — a dessert of dark sweet cherries served in a flaming brandy sauce over vanilla ice cream
- chilean firebush — South American shrub with scarlet flowers
- christening robe — a long white dress worn by a baby at his or her christening
- christmas beetle — any of various greenish-gold Australian scarab beetles of the genus Anoplognathus, which are common in summer
- church invisible — the entire body of Christian believers on earth and in heaven.
- chuvash republic — a constituent republic of W central Russia, in the middle Volga valley: generally low-lying with undulating plains and large areas of forest. Capital: Cheboksary. Pop: 1 313 900 (2002). Area: 18 300 sq km (7064 sq miles)
- circumscriptible — Capable of being circumscribed or limited by bounds.
- cluster variable — RR Lyrae star.
- collaborationism — The act of collaborating, especially with an enemy.
- collaborationist — A collaborationist government or individual is one that helps or gives support to the enemy during the war.
- combined honours — (in British education) a degree course that includes more than one subject
- commensurability — The quality of being commensurable or commensurate.
- composite number — a positive integer that can be factorized into two or more other positive integers
- constructability — Alternative form of constructibility.
- constructibility — The condition of being constructible.
- contrabassoonist — Someone who plays the contrabassoon.
- conversion table — a diagram which shows equivalent amounts in different measuring systems
- convertible lens — a lens containing two or more elements that can be used individually or in combination to provide a variety of focal lengths.
- copyright symbol — (character, legal) "©" The internationally recognised symbol required to introduce a copyright notice, a letter C with a circle around it. This can be encoded in ISO 8859-1 as character code decimal 169, hexadecimal A9, in HTML as ©, © or ©. A "c" in parentheses: "(c)" is sometimes used in documents stored in a coded character set such as ASCII that does not include the C in a circle, but this has no legal meaning.
- cray instability — A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine such as a Cray. Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation or minicomputer.
- crossover bodice — a bodice which has one side crossing over the other
- data abstraction — (data) Any representation of data in which the implementation details are hidden (abstracted). Abstract data types and objects are the two primary forms of data abstraction.
- de broglie waves — the set of waves that represent the behaviour of an elementary particle, or some atoms and molecules, under certain conditions. The de Broglie wavelength, λ, is given by λ = h/mv, where h is the Planck constant, m the mass, and v the velocity of the particle
- dearborn heights — city in SE Mich.: suburb of Detroit: pop. 58,000
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- debt forgiveness — the action or process of forgiving people their debts
- decision problem — (theory) A problem with a yes/no answer. Determining whether some potential solution to a question is actually a solution or not. E.g. "Is 43669" a prime number?". This is in contrast to a "search problem" which must find a solution from scratch, e.g. "What is the millionth prime number?". See decidability.
- deliberativeness — The state or quality of being deliberative.
- derbyshire chair — a chair of the mid-17th century, made of oak, usually without arms, and having a back of two carved rails between square uprights.