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18-letter words containing b, r, o, n

  • one's heart bleeds — used to express sympathetic grief, but often used ironically
  • one's number is up — one is finished; one is ruined or about to die
  • one-banana problem — (jargon, abuse)   At computer installations where the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. The incentives offered to said monkeys would then describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's taking them so long?" See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
  • open pandora's box — If someone or something opens Pandora's box or opens a Pandora's box, they do something that causes a lot of problems to appear that did not exist or were not known about before.
  • optical brightener — an additive that dyes and brightens fabric or paper
  • oriental alabaster — alabaster (def 2).
  • personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
  • piperonyl butoxide — a light-brown liquid, C 1 9 H 3 0 O 5 , used chiefly as a synergist in certain insecticides.
  • point-bearing pile — a pile depending on the soil or rock beneath its foot for support.
  • portable equipment — Portable equipment is electrical equipment that can easily be moved from one place to another while in operation or while connected to the supply.
  • prairie wake-robin — a woodland trillium, Trillium recurvatum, of the central U.S., having purple-mottled leaves and brown-purple flowers.
  • prepositional verb — a combination of verb and preposition, often with idiomatic meaning, differing from other phrasal verbs in that an object must always follow the preposition, as take after in The children take after their mother.
  • price on sb's head — If there is a price on someone 's head, an amount of money has been offered for the capture or killing of that person.
  • productivity bonus — an extra payment made to workers for being more productive or yielding more favourable results than normal
  • prometheus unbound — a drama in verse (1820) by Shelley.
  • protease inhibitor — a drug that inhibits the action of protease, especially any of a class of antiviral drugs that prevent the cleavage and replication of HIV proteins.
  • public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
  • pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
  • rabbit's-foot fern — hare's-foot fern.
  • rabbit-proof fence — a fence through which rabbits are unable to pass
  • radio range beacon — a radio transmitter that utilizes two or more directional antennas and transmits signals differing with direction, permitting a flier receiving a signal to determine his or her approximate bearing from the transmitter without a radio compass.
  • radiocarbon dating — the determination of the age of objects of organic origin by measurement of the radioactivity of their carbon content.
  • ragtag and bobtail — the riffraff; rabble: The ragtag and bobtail of every nation poured into the frontier in search of gold.
  • range of stability — the angle to the perpendicular through which a vessel may be heeled without losing the ability to right itself.
  • relational algebra — (database, theory)   A family of algebra with a well-founded semantics used for modelling the data stored in relational databases, and defining queries on it. The main operations of the relational algebra are the set operations (such as union, intersection, and cartesian product), selection (keeping only some lines of a table) and the projection (keeping only some columns). The relational data model describes how the data is structured.
  • remains to be seen — If you say that it remains to be seen whether something will happen, you mean that nobody knows whether it will happen.
  • return-flue boiler — a fire-tube boiler having flues that collect the combustion gases at the end of the boiler opposite the fire door and pass them through the boiler to an uptake above the fire door.
  • reverberation time — the time it takes for a sound made in a room to diminish by 60 decibels.
  • reversionary bonus — a bonus added to the sum payable on death or at the maturity of a with-profits assurance policy
  • ribbon development — housing or commercial buildings built along a stretch of road.
  • rubbish collection — the collection of domestic refuse for disposal
  • rufous hummingbird — a reddish-brown hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus, of western North America.
  • saint john's bread — carob (def 2).
  • saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
  • second-degree burn — a burned place or area: a burn where fire had ripped through the forest.
  • selective abortion — the aborting of particular embryos for medical or social reasons
  • shorthand notebook — a notebook used by a shorthand writer
  • shrubby cinquefoil — a small shrub, Potentilla fruticosa, of the rose family, native to the Northern temperate region, having pinnate leaves and numerous, showy, bright-yellow flowers.
  • simone de beauvoir — Simone [see-mawn] /siˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) 1908–86, French playwright, novelist, and essayist.
  • sindbad the sailor — (in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments), a wealthy citizen of Baghdad who relates the adventures of his seven wonderful voyages.
  • small pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
  • social bookmarking — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
  • sodium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble solid, in powder or granules, NaHCO 3 , usually prepared by the reaction of soda ash with carbon dioxide or obtained from the intermediate product of the Solvay process by purification: used chiefly in the manufacture of sodium salts, baking powder, and beverages, as a laboratory reagent, as a fire extinguisher, and in medicine as an antacid.
  • software backplane — (programming, tool)   A CASE framework from Atherton.
  • solomon rabinowitz — Solomon, Aleichem, Sholom.
  • stand-by generator — an electrical system which operates automatically in case the usual system malfunctions
  • stationary bicycle — an exercise bike
  • stroustrup, bjarne — Bjarne Stroustrup
  • subordinate clause — a clause that modifies the principal clause or some part of it or that serves a noun function in the principal clause, as when she arrived in the sentence I was there when she arrived or that she has arrived in the sentence I doubt that she has arrived.
  • subsidiary company — a company whose controlling interest is owned by another company.
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