19-letter words containing b, r
- kingdom of burgundy — a kingdom in E France, established in the early 6th century ad, eventually including the later duchy of Burgundy, Franche-Comté, and the Kingdom of Provence: known as the Kingdom of Arles from the 13th century
- knickerbocker glory — a rich confection consisting of layers of ice cream, jelly, cream, and fruit served in a tall glass
- know better than to — not to be so stupid as to
- lady baltimore cake — a white layer cake using only the beaten whites of eggs and spread with a fruitnut filling consisting of raisins, figs, walnuts or pecans, and sometimes candied cherries.
- language laboratory — a special room or rooms with sound-recording and -reproducing equipment for use by students to practice speaking foreign languages, usually with an instructor monitoring the program.
- lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- learning disability — a disorder, as dyslexia, usually affecting school-age children of normal or above-normal intelligence, characterized by difficulty in understanding or using spoken or written language, and thought to be related to impairment or slowed development of perceptual motor skills.
- liability insurance — insurance covering the insured against losses arising from injury or damage to another person or property.
- liberation theology — a 20th-century Christian theology, emphasizing the Biblical and doctrinal theme of liberation from oppression, whether racial, sexual, economic, or political.
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- lighten sb's burden — If someone or something lightens your burden or your load, they make a bad or difficult situation better for you.
- load-bearing printf — (programming, humour) The kind of bug present in a program which works correctly when producing debug output but fails when the debugging is turned off. The expression combines load-bearing wall and printf as used in debugging by printf.
- lobby correspondent — a political correspondent who reports from parliament
- lobster-tail helmet — a burgonet fitted with a long, articulated tail of lames for protecting the nape of the neck, worn by cavalry in the 17th century.
- logical unit number — (storage) (LUN) A 3-bit identifier used on a SCSI bus to distinguish between up to eight devices (logical units) with the same SCSI ID.
- lord baltimore cake — a yellow layer cake, using only the yolks of eggs and having a fruit-nut filling consisting of pecans, almonds, maraschino cherries, and macaroon crumbs.
- louis ii de bourbon — Condé, Prince de.
- magnesium carbonate — a white powder, MgCO 3 , insoluble in water and alcohol, soluble in acids, used in dentifrices and cosmetics, in medicine as an antacid, and as a refractory material.
- malleable cast iron — white cast iron that has been malleablized.
- mary mcleod bethune — Mary McLeod [muh-kloud] /məˈklaʊd/ (Show IPA), 1875–1955, U.S. educator and civil-rights leader.
- megabits per second — (unit) (Mbps, Mb/s) Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second (not 1,048,576). E.g. Ethernet can carry 10 Mbps.
- membership function — fuzzy subset
- mercurial barometer — mercury barometer.
- minimum iron fabric — cloth used to make clothes that require little ironing
- molecular biologist — a specialist in the study of biological phenomena at the molecular level
- molybdenum trioxide — a white, crystalline, sparingly water-soluble powder, MoO 3 , used chiefly in the manufacture of molybdenum compounds.
- mordvinian 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)
- mud object oriented — (games) (MOO) One of the many MUD spin-offs (e.g. MUSH, MUSE, and MUX) created to diversify the realm of interactive text-based gaming. A MOO is similar to a MUSH in that the users themselves can create objects, rooms, and code to add to the environment. The most frequently used server software for running a MOO is LambdaMOO but alternatives include WinMOO and MacGoesMOO.
- mutual masturbation — the act of two or more people masturbating each other
- naberezhniye chelny — city in E European Russia, on the Kama River: pop. 514,000
- national book award — any of several awards given annually, 1949–79, to an author whose book was judged the best in its category: administered by the Association of American Publishers. Abbreviation: NBA, N.B.A.
- national coal board — a statutory corporation set up to run Britain's nationalised coal mining industry between 1947 and 1994, at which time the industry was privatized
- negation by failure — An extralogical feature of Prolog and other logic programming languages in which failure of unification is treated as establishing the negation of a relation. For example, if Ronald Reagan is not in our database and we asked if he was an American, Prolog would answer "no".
- neighbourhood watch — a scheme under which members of a community agree together to take responsibility for keeping an eye on each other's property, as a way of preventing crime
- neville chamberlain — (Arthur) Neville, 1869–1940, British statesman: prime minister 1937–40.
- next door neighbour — a person who lives in the house, flat, etc, next to one's home
- non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
- nonthrombocytopenic — Not thrombocytopenic.
- normal distribution — a theoretical frequency distribution represented by a normal curve.
- object-oriented sql — (language) (OSQL) A functional language, a superset of SQL, used in Hewlett-Packard's OpenODB database system.
- observation balloon — a balloon that is used for gathering information and reconnaissance purposes and spotting aircraft
- okeechobee waterway — a waterway in S Florida from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. 155 miles (244 km) long.
- olive-backed thrush — Swainson's thrush.
- on the baker's list — in good health
- on-the-job training — apprenticeship, learning by doing
- optical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
- over sb's dead body — You can say over my dead body to emphasize that you feel very strongly that something should not happen, and that you will do everything you can to prevent it.
- oxyacetylene burner — a blowpipe for cutting or welding metals at high temperatures
- 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.
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.