17-letter words containing b, y, s
- cypriot syllabary — a syllabic script in use on Cyprus in the first millennium b.c., used for the writing of Greek and of an unknown language.
- cytotrophoblastic — Relating to, or containing, cytotrophoblasts.
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- desoxyribonucleic — Alternative spelling of deoxyribonucleic.
- disability clause — a clause in a life-insurance policy providing for waiver of premium and sometimes payment of monthly income if the policyholder becomes totally and permanently disabled.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- drive-by shooting — an incident in which a person, building, or vehicle is shot at by someone in a moving vehicle
- 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.
- employee benefits — benefits, such as health insurance, pension payments, or childcare, given to employees in addition to their usual salary or wage
- feasibility study — (systems analysis) Part of the systems develpment life cycle which aims to determine whether it is sensible to develop some system. The most popular model of feasibility study is "TELOS", standing for Technical, Economic, Legal, Operational, Schedule. Technical Feasibility: does the technology exist to implement the proposed system? Is it a practical proposition? Economic Feasibility: is the system cost-effective? Do benefits outweigh costs? Legal Feasibility: is there any conflict between the proposed system and legal requirements, e.g. the Data Protection Act? Operational Feasibility: are the current work practices and procedures adequate to support the new system? Schedule Feasibility: can the system be developed in time? After the feasibility study, the requirements analysis should be carried out.
- 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
- gamma-ray burster — a source of gamma-ray bursts
- garden strawberry — a plant which has white flowers and red edible fruits and is spread by runners, Fragaria ananassa
- gibbs free energy — the thermodynamic function of a system that is equal to its enthalpy minus the product of its absolute temperture and entropy: a decrease in the function is equal to the maximum amount of work available exclusive of that due to pressure times volume change during a reversible, isothermal, isobaric process.
- glastonbury chair — a folding chair having legs crossed front-to-back and having arms connected to the back and to the front seat rail.
- globus hystericus — the sensation of having a lump in the throat or difficulty in swallowing for which no medical cause can be found.
- go by the wayside — to be put aside on account of something more urgent
- have it both ways — to try to get the best of a situation, argument, etc, by chopping and changing between alternatives or opposites
- house of assembly — the legislature or the lower house of the legislature in certain countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
- 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)
- i am bound to say — You can say 'I am bound to say' to introduce a statement expressing something that you find undesirable or unexpected.
- impressionability — easily impressed or influenced; susceptible: an impressionable youngster.
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- indestructibility — not destructible; that cannot be destroyed.
- indian strawberry — a plant, Duchesnea indica, of the rose family, native to India, having yellow flowers and inedible fruit resembling strawberries.
- indistinguishably — In an indistinguishable manner; so that separate components or differences cannot be discerned.
- insurmountability — incapable of being surmounted, passed over, or overcome; insuperable: an insurmountable obstacle.
- intersubjectively — (philosophy) In an intersubjective way; between or among multiple subjects.
- intersubjectivity — The state or condition of being intersubjective.
- intestinal bypass — the surgical circumvention, by anastomosis, of a diseased portion of the intestine; also sometimes used to reduce nutrient absorption in morbidly obese patients.
- inverted snobbery — the attitude of an inverted snob
- japanese barberry — a thorny barberry, Berberis thunbergii, of Japan, having yellow flowers and bearing bright-red fruit, grown as a hedge plant.
- jobs for the boys — If you refer to work as jobs for the boys, you mean that the work is unfairly given to someone's friends, supporters, or relations, even though they may not be the best qualified people to do it.
- john of salisbury — c1115–80, English prelate and scholar.
- laboratory school — a school maintained by a college or university for the training of student teachers.
- liberty of speech — freedom of speech.
- lowbush blueberry — a shrub, Vaccinium angustifolium, of eastern North America, having small, white flowers and blue-black fruit.
- malagasy republic — former name of Madagascar.
- massachusetts bay — an inlet of the Atlantic, off the E coast of Massachusetts.
- mental disability — a general or specific intellectual handicap, resulting directly or indirectly from injury to the brain or from abnormal neurological development
- mesembryanthemums — Plural form of mesembryanthemum.
- movable-do system — a system of solmization in which the syllable do can be transposed to the tonic of any key.
- national assembly — the body constituted by the French Third Estate in June 1789 after the calling of the Estates General. It was dissolved in Sept 1791 to be replaced by the new Legislative Assembly
- naval observatory — an astronomical observatory located in Washington, D.C., operated by the U.S. government, and responsible for the U.S. time service.
- non-assignability — capable of being specified: The word has no assignable meaning in our language.
- nonsense syllable — any of numerous letter combinations without meaning, used in learning experiments.
- northeast by east — a point on the compass 11°15′ east of northeast. Abbreviation: NEbE.
- northwest by west — a point on the compass, 11°15′ west of northwest. Abbreviation: NWbW.