17-letter words containing c, b, r
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- 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.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- executive burnout — a total loss of energy and interest and an inability to function effectively, experienced by some executives as a result of excessive demands upon their resources or chronic overwork
- exhibition centre — a large building in which major trade fairs are held
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fluid lubrication — lubrication in which bearing surfaces are separated by an oil film sustained by the motion of the parts
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- 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
- garbage collector — refuse collector, dustman
- 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.
- green book cd-rom — A standard CD-ROM format developed by Philips for CD-i. It is ISO 9660 compliant and uses mode 2 form 2 addressing. It can only be played on drives which are XA (Extended Architecture) compatible. Many Green Book discs contain CD-i applications which can only be played on a CD-i player but many others contain films or music videos. Video CDs in Green Book format are normally labelled "Digital Video on CD" Green Book was obsoleted by White book CD-ROM in March 1994.
- hard-shelled crab — a crab, esp. an edible sea crab, before it has shed its hard shell
- hasbrouck heights — a borough in NE New Jersey.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- herbaceous border — A herbaceous border is a flower bed containing a mixture of plants that flower every year.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- hornblende schist — a variety of schist containing needles of hornblende that lie in parallel planes.
- humpbacked bridge — A humpbacked bridge or humpback bridge is a short and very curved bridge with a shape similar to a semi-circle.
- hybrid fiber coax — (networking) (HFC) A kind of physical connection used in networks for audio, video, and data. DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) is used in Europe and DOCSIS is used in N America.
- hydrofluorocarbon — Any of a class of partly chlorinated and fluorinated hydrocarbons, used as an alternative to chlorofluorocarbons in foam production, refrigeration, and other processes.
- 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)
- hyperexcitability — an excessive reaction to stimuli.
- iambic pentameter — a verse line consisting of five metrical iambs
- impracticableness — The state of being impracticable; impracticability.
- in the background — behind the focus of attention
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- incubation period — the period between infection and the appearance of signs of a disease.
- indecipherability — Quality of being indecipherable.
- indescribableness — The quality of being indescribable.
- indestructibility — not destructible; that cannot be destroyed.
- insectivorous bat — any bat of the suborder Microchiroptera, typically having large ears and feeding on insects. The group includes common bats (Myotis species), vampire bats, etc
- instance variable — (programming) In object-oriented programming, one of the variables of a class template which may have a different value for each object of that class. Instance variables hold the state of an object.
- inter-convertible — to subject to interconversion; interchange.
- internet backbone — (communications, networking) High-speed networks that carry Internet traffic. These communications networks are provided by companies such as AT&T, GTE, IBM, MCI, Netcom, Sprint, UUNET and consist of high-speed links in the T1, T3, OC1 and OC3 ranges. The backbones carry Internet traffic around the world and meet at Network Access Points (NAPs). The topology of the "backbone" and its interconnections may once have resembled a spine with ribs connected along its length but is now almost certainly more like a fishing net wrapped around the world with many circular paths.
- intersubjectively — (philosophy) In an intersubjective way; between or among multiple subjects.
- intersubjectivity — The state or condition of being intersubjective.
- invincible armada — Armada.
- irreconcilability — incapable of being brought into harmony or adjustment; incompatible: irreconcilable differences.
- irrecoverableness — The quality of being irrecoverable.
- irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
- job-order costing — a method of cost accounting by which the total cost of a given unit or quantity is determined by computing the costs that go into making a product as it moves through the manufacturing process.
- jump trace buffer — (JTB) A feature of some pipelined processors (e.g. Amulet, Pentium?) which stores the source and destination addresses of the last few branch instuctions executed. When a branch instruction is fetched, its source is looked for in the JTB. If found, the next instuction fetch will be from the previous destination of that branch. If it turns out that the branch shouldn't have been taken this time, then the pipeline is flushed. This means that in a tight loop it is not necessary to flush the pipeline every time you jump back to the start.
- karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
- keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.