18-letter words containing c, o, n
- back/down to earth — If you come down to earth or back to earth, you have to face the reality of everyday life after a period of great excitement.
- background reading — reading of related works in order to get contextual information on a topic that you are intending to study or write about
- backus normal form — Backus-Naur Form
- balance an account — If you balance an account, you adjust entries in the account in order to make the credit and debit totals equal.
- balanced computing — (jargon) Matching computer tools to job activities so that the computer system structure parallels the organisation structure and work functions. Both personal computers and employees operate in a decentralised environment with monitoring of achievement of management objectives from centralised corporate systems.
- balanced scorecard — A balanced scorecard is a type of management report which includes both financial and non-financial measures.
- ball-and-claw foot — a foot having the form of a bird's claw grasping a ball.
- bargaining counter — A bargaining counter is the same as a bargaining chip.
- basal conglomerate — a conglomerate deposited on an erosion surface and constituting the bottom layer of a stratigraphic series.
- battle of clontarf — a battle fought in 1014, near Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland, in which the Danes were defeated by the Irish but the Irish king, Brian Boru, was killed
- be in good company — If you say that someone is in good company, you mean that they should not be ashamed of a mistake or opinion, because some important or respected people have made the same mistake or have the same opinion.
- beauty competition — a competition in which the participants, usually women, are judged on their attractiveness, with a prize, and often a title, awarded to the winner
- behavioral science — any of several studies, as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., that examine human activities in an attempt to discover recurrent patterns and to formulate rules about social behavior
- benchmark position — a public service job used for comparison with a similar position, such as a position in commerce, for wage settlements
- bend over backward — to try to an unusual degree (to please, pacify, etc.)
- benzyl thiocyanate — a colorless, crystalline, water-insoluble solid, C 8 H 7 NS, used as an insecticide.
- berwick-upon-tweed — a town in N England, in N Northumberland at the mouth of the Tweed: much involved in border disputes between England and Scotland between the 12th and 16th centuries; neutral territory 1551–1885. Pop: 12 870 (2001)
- bessemer converter — a refractory-lined furnace used to convert pig iron into steel by the Bessemer process
- bill of indictment — a formal document accusing a person or persons of crime, formerly presented to a grand jury for certification as a true bill but now signed by a court official
- biodiversification — the process by which the diversity of plants or animals develops or is increased within a particular region or group of organisms.
- biological control — the control of destructive organisms by the use of other organisms, such as the natural predators of the pests
- biological parents — the biological mother and father of a child
- bird's-nest orchid — a brown parasitic Eurasian orchid, Neottia nidus-avis, whose thick fleshy roots resemble a bird's nest and contain a fungus on which the orchid feeds
- birth control pill — an oral contraceptive for women, containing the hormones estrogen and progesterone or progesterone alone, that inhibits ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized ovum, causing temporary infertility.
- birth-control pill — an oral contraceptive for women, containing the hormones estrogen and progesterone or progesterone alone, that inhibits ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized ovum, causing temporary infertility.
- bitwise complement — The bitwise complement of a bit field is a bit field of the same length but with each zero changed to a one and vice versa. This is the same as the ones complement of a binary integer.
- black nickel oxide — a gray-black, water-insoluble powder, Ni 2 O 3 , which, at 600°C, decomposes to nickel oxide: used chiefly in storage batteries as an oxidizing agent.
- black-necked stork — a large Australian stork, Xenorhyncus asiaticus, having a white plumage, dark green back and tail, and red legs
- blackback flounder — any of various popular food flatfishes, as Parophrys vetulus of the Pacific (English sole) and Pseudopleuronectes americanus of the Atlantic (winter flounder or blackback flounder)
- blanche of castile — ?1188–1252, queen consort (1223–26) of Louis VIII of France, born in Spain. The mother of Louis IX, she acted as regent during his minority (1226–36) and his absence on a crusade (1248–52)
- blissful ignorance — unawareness or inexperience of something unpleasant
- blocking capacitor — a capacitor that blocks the passage of direct current but allows alternating current to pass
- board of education — a group or agency with responsibility for education
- board of elections — a bipartisan board appointed usually by local authorities and charged with control of elections and voting procedure.
- boltzmann constant — the ratio of the gas constant to the Avogadro constant, equal to 1.380 650 × 10–23 joule per kelvin
- bone of contention — If a particular matter or issue is a bone of contention, it is the subject of a disagreement or argument.
- bottom dead center — Bottom dead center is the point at which the piston of an engine is nearest to the axis of the crankshaft. On a vertical engine, this is the lowest point that the piston reaches.
- bottom dead centre — the position of the crank of a reciprocating engine when the piston is at its nearest point to the crankshaft
- boundary condition — a stated restriction, usually in the form of an equation, that limits the possible solutions to a differential equation.
- boundedly complete — (theory) (Or "consistently complete") In domain theory, a complete partial order is boundedly complete if every bounded subset has a least upper bound.
- branch instruction — a machine-language or assembly-language instruction that causes the computer to branch to another instruction
- branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
- branching fraction — (in branching) the proportion of the disintegrating nuclei that follow a particular branch to the total number of disintegrating nuclides
- brand-name product — A brand-name product is one which is made by a well-known manufacturer and has the manufacturer's label on it.
- breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
- break your silence — If someone breaks their silence about something, they talk about something that they have not talked about before or for a long time.
- brightness control — a control that enables the brightness of the image on a television screen, computer monitor, etc to be adjusted
- bring someone luck — If you say that something brings bad luck or brings someone good luck, you believe that it has an influence on whether good or bad things happen to them.
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.