16-letter words containing b, y, r, l
- butterfly scheme — A parallel version of Scheme for the BBN Butterfly computer.
- butterfly stroke — a swimming stroke in which the arms are plunged forward together in large circular movements
- cabbage root fly — a dipterous fly, Erioischia brassicae, whose larvae feed on the roots and stems of cabbages and other brassicas: family Muscidae (houseflies, etc)
- canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
- canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
- cape may warbler — a North American wood warbler, Dendroica tigrina, olive-green striped with black on the wings and back and yellow striped with black on the breast.
- carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
- celebrity status — the prominence of film star, footballer, musician etc who is constantly photographed and written about in tabloids and magazines
- chernobyl packet — (networking) /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, named in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ethernet address and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet.
- chiclet keyboard — (hardware, abuse) A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of Chiclets chewing gum. Used especially to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop computers were launched with them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
- commensurability — The quality of being commensurable or commensurate.
- constructability — Alternative form of constructibility.
- constructibility — The condition of being constructible.
- 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.
- cramp sb's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behavior in some way.
- 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.
- cuban royal palm — a feather palm, Roystonea regia, of tropical America, having a trunk that is swollen in the middle, drooping leaves from 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters) long, and small, round fruit.
- cut and blow-dry — a hairdressing procedure in which the customer's hair is cut and blow-dried
- cytotrophoblasts — Plural form of cytotrophoblast.
- daylight robbery — If someone charges you a great deal of money for something and you think this is unfair or unreasonable, you can refer to this as daylight robbery.
- demolition derby — a competition in which contestants drive old cars into each other until there is only one car left running
- deoxyribonucleic — (genetics) Of or pertaining to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or its derivatives.
- dichlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twelve isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing two chlorine atoms.
- diethyl carbinol — a colorless, liquid isomer of amyl alcohol, (CH3CH2)2CHOH, used in drugs and as a solvent
- dimethylcarbinol — isopropyl alcohol.
- dimly-remembered — recalled in an unclear or vague way
- discriminability — The condition of being discriminable.
- distributionally — In a distributional manner.
- double monastery — a religious community of both men and women who live in separate establishments under the same superior and who worship in a common church.
- dry-cell battery — a dry battery
- dublin bay prawn — a large prawn usually used in a dish of scampi
- east gwillimbury — a town in S Ontario, in S Canada.
- ebony spleenwort — a fern, Asplenium platyneuron, of woody areas of North America, having ladderlike leaves and shiny, dark brown stems.
- eclipsing binary — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- erythroblastosis — A medical condition in which erythroblasts are abnormally found in the blood.
- fancy dress ball — a ball at which the guests wear fancy dress
- fertility symbol — an object, esp a phallic symbol, used in fertility-cult ceremonies to symbolize regeneration
- flabbergastingly — Surprisingly, astonishingly or amazingly.
- flashbulb memory — the clear recollections that a person may have of the circumstances associated with a dramatic event
- flat-track bully — a sportsperson who dominates inferior opposition, but who cannot beat top-level opponents
- flibbertigibbety — Like a flibbertigibbet; flighty; scatterbrained.
- frontal lobotomy — Surgery. a psychosurgical procedure in which the frontal lobes are separated from the rest of the brain by cutting the connecting nerve fibers.
- galvanic battery — battery (def 1a).
- general assembly — the legislature in some states of the U.S.
- generalisability — Non-Oxford British standard spelling of generalizability.
- generalizability — The quality of being generalizable.
- harleian library — a large library of manuscripts collected by the British statesman Robert Harley and his son and now housed in the British Museum.
- huckleberry finn — (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) a novel (1884) by Mark Twain.
- hyaloid membrane — the delicate, pellucid, and nearly structureless membrane enclosing the vitreous humor of the eye.
- hybrid perpetual — a type of cultivated rose bred from varieties having vigorous growth and more or less recurrent bloom.