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13-letter words containing c, a, b

  • 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.
  • ball the jack — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
  • ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
  • ballet school — a school where professional ballet dancers are trained
  • ballistically — of or relating to ballistics.
  • 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.
  • balsam capivi — copaiba.
  • balsam spruce — either of two North American coniferous trees of the genus Picea, P. pungens (the blue spruce) or P. engelmanni
  • baltic shield — the wide area of ancient rock in Scandinavia
  • baltic states — the republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which became constituent republics of the former Soviet Union in 1940, regaining their independence in 1991
  • 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
  • barbary coast — coastal region of N Africa, extending from Egypt to the Atlantic, inhabited chiefly by Berbers and once (until early 19th cent.) dominated by pirates
  • barber's itch — any of various fungal infections of the bearded portion of the neck and face
  • barcoo salute — a movement of the hand to brush flies away from the face
  • 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.
  • baroreceptors — Plural form of baroreceptor.
  • barrel cactus — any of several large, cylindrical, ribbed, spiny cacti of the genera Echinocactus and Ferocactus.
  • barrier beach — a sand ridge that rises slightly above the surface of the sea and runs roughly parallel to the shore, from which it is separated by a lagoon.
  • barrier cream — a cream used to protect the skin, esp the hands, from dirt and from the action of oils or solvents
  • barytocalcite — a mineral, double carbonate of calcium and barium, CaCO 3 ⋅BaCO 3 , usually found in veins of lead minerals.
  • base exchange — a nonprofit general store at a military base, for the sale of merchandise for personal use, refreshments, etc.
  • basel accords — the three sets of rules, Basel I, Basel II, and Basel III, for regulating the banking industry, drawn up by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
  • 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
  • basic fortran — (language)   A subset of Fortran.
  • basic plumage — the plumage assumed by an adult bird at its complete, usually annual, molt.
  • basic process — Military. basic training. a soldier or airman receiving basic training.
  • basidiomycete — any fungus of the phylum Basidiomycota (formerly class Basidiomycetes), in which the spores are produced in basidia. The group includes boletes, puffballs, smuts, and rusts
  • basket clause — an all-inclusive or comprehensive clause in a contract
  • bass clarinet — a clarinet with the lowest range, in the octave below the B-flat clarinet
  • batch-process — to perform batch processing on (files)
  • bathtub curve — Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it "tires out". See also burn-in period, infant mortality.
  • bathylimnetic — (of an organism) living in the depths of lakes and marshes
  • batrachotoxin — a steroidal alkaloid, C31H42N2O6, found in the skin of certain Neotropical frogs (genus Phyllobates) and used on poison arrows: one of the most powerful natural neurotoxins known
  • battle jacket — a closefitting jacket reaching to the waist
  • battlecruiser — A large warship of a type built in the early 20th century, carrying similar armament to a battleship but faster and more lightly armored.
  • bay of biscay — a large bay of the Atlantic Ocean between W France and N Spain: notorious for storms
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