13-letter words containing c, a, b, n
- back-breaking — Back-breaking work involves a lot of hard physical effort.
- back-end load — the final charges of commission and expenses made by an investment trust, insurance policy, etc, when the investor is paid out
- back-slapping — Back-slapping is noisy, cheerful behaviour which people use in order to show affection or appreciation to each other.
- back-stabbing — Back-stabbing consists of unkind and disloyal actions or remarks that are likely to harm someone such as a friend or colleague.
- backbone site — A key Usenet, electronic mail and/or Internet site; one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1993 include uunet and the mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University and the University of Texas. Compare rib site, leaf site.
- backformation — Alternative spelling of back-formation.
- backgrounders — Plural form of backgrounder.
- backgrounding — Present participle of background.
- backing group — a group of musicians providing an instrumental or vocal accompaniment for a pop singer
- backing light — Also called backing striplight, backing strip. Theater. a striplight providing diffused illumination for the background of a stage set.
- backing store — a computer storage device, usually a disk, that provides additional storage space for information so that it can be accessed and referred to when required and may be copied into the processor if needed
- backing track — a recorded instrumental or vocal accompaniment for a pop singer or pop number
- backpedalling — to retard the forward motion by pressing backward on the pedal, especially of a bicycle with coaster brakes.
- backstitching — Present participle of backstitch.
- backwardation — the difference between the spot price for a commodity, including rent and interest, and the forward price
- bacteriogenic — Caused by bacteria.
- bacteriolysin — an antibody which, when it combines with bacterial cells, causes lysis of those cells, thus destroying them
- bacteriotoxin — any toxin that kills bacteria
- bacterization — subjection to bacterial action
- badminton cup — a long refreshing drink of claret with soda water and sugar
- bag-snatching — theft that involves snatching women's handbags
- balance shaft — a shaft in a vehicle engine that is designed to reduce the amount of vibration from other moving parts as it rotates
- balance sheet — A balance sheet is a written statement of the amount of money and property that a company or person has, including amounts of money that are owed or are owing. Balance sheet is also used to refer to the general financial state of a company.
- balance staff — a pivoted axle or shaft on which the balance is mounted.
- balance wheel — a wheel oscillating against the hairspring of a timepiece, thereby regulating its beat
- balanced diet — a diet consisting of the proper quantities and proportions of foods needed to maintain health or growth.
- balanced fund — a mutual fund made up of both stocks and bonds
- balanced line — a transmission line in which the oppositely directed components are symmetrical with respect to each other and to the ground.
- balanced step — any of a series of staircase winders so planned that they are nearly as wide at the inside of the stair as the adjacent fliers.
- balanced tree — (algorithm) An optimisation of a tree which aims to keep equal numbers of items on each subtree of each node so as to minimise the maximum path from the root to any leaf node. As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of faster search. A B-tree is a kind of balanced tree that can have more than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not restricted to being a binary tree).
- balancing act — If you perform a balancing act, you try to deal successfully with two or more people, groups, or situations that are in opposition to each other.
- balch springs — a town in NE Texas.
- ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
- balloon chuck — a lathe chuck having the form of a hollow hemisphere, for enclosing and holding small parts, as balance staffs of watches, so that only their ends are exposed.
- balloon clock — a bracket clock of the late 18th century, having a round dial on a short case with concave sides resting on bracket feet.
- bancassurance — the selling of insurance products by a bank to its customers
- band spectrum — a spectrum consisting of a number of bands of closely spaced lines that are associated with emission or absorption of radiation by molecules
- bandicoot rat — any of three burrowing rats of the genera Bandicota and Nesokia, of S and SE Asia: family Muridae
- banister back — a back of a chair or the like, usually having semicircular spindles between the top rail and the cross rail or seat.
- bank discount — interest on a loan deducted from the principal amount when the loan is made and based on the loan's face value
- banzai attack — a mass attack of troops, without concern for casualties, as practised by the Japanese in World War II
- barefacedness — The state or quality of being barefaced.
- bargain price — a low price
- baritone clef — an F clef locating F below middle C on the third line of the staff.
- barnacle code — (programming, humour) Any piece of code (usually a static method) that has been appended to a class where it doesn't logically belong, due to a lack of anywhere else to put it.
- baroclinicity — a common state of fluid stratification in which surfaces of constant pressure and others of constant density are not parallel but intersect.
- base exchange — a nonprofit general store at a military base, for the sale of merchandise for personal use, refreshments, etc.
- baseline cost — the projected cost for an undertaking at the time it is budgeted
- basement-rock — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
- basic english — a simplified form of English, proposed by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, containing a vocabulary of approximately 850 of the commonest English words, intended as an international language