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19-letter words containing c, o, b, d

  • cock-and-bull story — If you describe something that someone tells you as a cock-and-bull story, you mean that you do not believe it is true.
  • common object model — Component Object Model
  • competitive bidding — a system by which a contract is awarded to the lowest bidder
  • convergent boundary — a major geologic discontinuity or suture marking the juncture of lithospheric plates that have been joined by plate tectonics.
  • coordination number — the number of coordinated species surrounding the central atom in a complex or crystal
  • corruption of blood — the impurity before law that results from attainder and disqualifies the attainted person from inheriting, retaining, or bequeathing lands or interests in lands: abolished in 1870.
  • counterpoise bridge — another name for bascule bridge
  • cowboys and indians — a children's game in which players imitate the supposed behavior of cowboys and Indians in conflict, as in shooting, chasing, and capturing.
  • cuboidal epithelium — epithelium consisting of one or more layers of cells of cuboid or polyhedral shape.
  • cudgel one's brains — to think hard about a problem
  • darby and joan club — a club for elderly people
  • deathbed confession — a confession that somebody makes just before he or she dies, usually relating to some long concealed crime or secret
  • deoxyribonucleoside — a compound composed of deoxyribose and either a purine or a pyrimidine.
  • deoxyribonucleotide — an ester of a deoxyribonucleoside and phosphoric acid; a constituent of DNA.
  • detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
  • developable surface — a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without stretching or compressing any part of it, as a circular cone.
  • devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • double counterpoint — invertible counterpoint using two transposable voices.
  • double-helical gear — herringbone gear.
  • dry-bulk cargo ship — a ship that carries an unpackaged dry cargo such as coal or grain; bulk carrier
  • electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
  • extendible compiler — (language)   (ETC) A Fortran-like compiler that can be extended with macros.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gigabits per second — (unit)   (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
  • goldbach conjecture — an unproved theorem that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.
  • handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
  • honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
  • hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
  • hydroxybenzoic acid — Hydroxybenzoic acid is the active ingredient in a number of drugs, for example, aspirin. Hydroxybenzoic acid is also used as a preservative.
  • hydroxybutyric acid — ketone body.
  • hydroxydaunorubicin — Doxorubicin.
  • john c breckinridge — John Cabell, 1821–75, vice president of the U.S. 1857–61: Confederate general in the American Civil War.
  • kellogg-briand pact — a treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and urging peaceful means for the settlement of international disputes, originally signed in 1928 by 15 nations, later joined by 49 others.
  • kilobits per second — (unit)   (kbps, kb/s) A unit of data rate where 1 kb/s = 1000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of storage where 1 Kb = 1024 bits (note upper case K).
  • knock someone bandy — to amaze or astound
  • lady baltimore cake — a white layer cake using only the beaten whites of eggs and spread with a fruitnut filling consisting of raisins, figs, walnuts or pecans, and sometimes candied cherries.
  • lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
  • lobby correspondent — a political correspondent who reports from parliament
  • lord baltimore cake — a yellow layer cake, using only the yolks of eggs and having a fruit-nut filling consisting of pecans, almonds, maraschino cherries, and macaroon crumbs.
  • mary mcleod bethune — Mary McLeod [muh-kloud] /məˈklaʊd/ (Show IPA), 1875–1955, U.S. educator and civil-rights leader.
  • megabits per second — (unit)   (Mbps, Mb/s) Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second (not 1,048,576). E.g. Ethernet can carry 10 Mbps.
  • monoclonal antibody — antibody produced by a laboratory-grown cell clone, either of a hybridoma or a virus-transformed lymphocyte, that is more abundant and uniform than natural antibody and is able to bind specifically to a single site on almost any chosen antigen or reveal previously unknown antigen sites: used as an analytic tool in scientific research and medical diagnosis and potentially important in the treatment of certain diseases. Abbreviation: MAb.
  • mordvinian republic — a constituent republic of W central Russia, in the middle Volga basin. Capital: Saransk. Pop: 888 700 (2002). Area: 26 200 sq km (10 110 sq miles)
  • mud object oriented — (games)   (MOO) One of the many MUD spin-offs (e.g. MUSH, MUSE, and MUX) created to diversify the realm of interactive text-based gaming. A MOO is similar to a MUSH in that the users themselves can create objects, rooms, and code to add to the environment. The most frequently used server software for running a MOO is LambdaMOO but alternatives include WinMOO and MacGoesMOO.
  • municipal bond fund — a mutual fund that invests in municipal bonds.
  • national coal board — a statutory corporation set up to run Britain's nationalised coal mining industry between 1947 and 1994, at which time the industry was privatized
  • neighbourhood watch — a scheme under which members of a community agree together to take responsibility for keeping an eye on each other's property, as a way of preventing crime
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