18-letter words containing g, r, o, i
- biological therapy — biotherapy
- biological warfare — the use of living organisms or their toxic products to induce death or incapacity in humans and animals and damage to plant crops, etc
- 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
- borosilicate glass — any of a range of heat- and chemical-resistant glasses, such as Pyrex, prepared by fusing together boron(III) oxide, silicon dioxide, and, usually, a metal oxide
- bosnia-herzegovina — a country in SE Europe; a constituent republic of Yugoslavia until 1991; in a state of civil war (1992–95); Serbian and Croatian forces were also involved: mostly barren and mountainous, with forests in the east. Languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (formerly all regarded together as Serbo-Croat). Religion: Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic. Currency: marka (pegged to the euro). Capital: Sarajevo. Pop: 3 875 723 (2013 est). Area: 51 129 sq km (19 737 sq miles)
- boulogne-sur-seine — an industrial suburb of SW Paris. Pop: 106 367 (1999)
- branching fraction — (in branching) the proportion of the disintegrating nuclei that follow a particular branch to the total number of disintegrating nuclides
- 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.
- bring to its knees — If a country or organization is brought to its knees, it is almost completely destroyed by someone or something.
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- burn one's bridges — If you burn your bridges, you do something which forces you to continue with a particular course of action, and makes it impossible for you to return to an earlier situation or relationship.
- burn one's fingers — to suffer from having meddled or been rash
- cabernet sauvignon — a black grape originally grown in the Bordeaux area of France, and now throughout the wine-producing world
- cabinet government — parliamentary government.
- carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
- cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
- catalogue raisonne — a descriptive catalogue, esp one covering works of art in an exhibition or collection
- categorial grammar — a theory that characterizes syntactic categories in terms of functions between classes of expressions. The basic classes are names (N) and sentences (S). Intransitive verbs are symbols for functions which take a name and yield a sentence (written S/N), adverbs form compound verbs from verbs (for example, run fast) and so are (S/N)/(S/N), etc
- cationic detergent — a type of detergent in which the active part of the molecule is a positive ion (cation). Cationic detergents are usually quaternary ammonium salts and often also have bactericidal properties
- cauliflower fungus — a large edible white to yellowish cauliflowerlike mushroom, Sparassis radicata, widely distributed in North America.
- ceiling decoration — a plaster moulding for the centre of a ceiling; other decoration, such as coving
- chagos archipelago — group of islands in the Indian Ocean 1,180 mi (1,899 km) northeast of Mauritius, comprising the British Indian Ocean Territory: chief island, Diego Garcia
- character encoding — (character) (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping between binary data values and character code positions (or "code points"). Early systems stored characters in a variety of ways, e.g. four six-bit characters in a 24-bit word, but around 1960, eight-bit bytes started to become the most common data storage layout, with each character stored in one byte, typically in the ASCII character set. In the case of ASCII, the character encoding is an identity mapping: code position 65 maps to the byte value 65. This is possible because ASCII uses only code positions representable as single bytes, i.e., values between 0 and 255. (US-ASCII only uses values 0 to 127, in fact.) From the late 1990s, there was increased use of larger character sets such as Unicode and many CJK coded character sets. These can represent characters from many languages and more symbols.
- charge conjugation — the mathematical operation of replacing every elementary particle by its antiparticle. Symbol: C.
- chinese gooseberry — kiwi (sense 2)
- cholangiocarcinoma — (pathology) Cancer of the bile duct.
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- christmas stocking — A Christmas stocking is a long sock which children hang up on Christmas Eve. During the night, parents fill the stocking with small presents.
- chromatic printing — printing from blocks or types inked with various colours
- chromolithographer — One engaged in chromolithography.
- chromolithographic — Pertaining to, or made by, chromolithography.
- chronostratigraphy — The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.
- cigar-store indian — a wooden statue of an American Indian, traditionally displayed at the entrance of cigar stores.
- circumnavigational — Relating to circumnavigation.
- clobbering machine — pressure to conform with accepted standards
- coastguard station — the headquarters or local offices of a coastguard
- collection charges — the charges levied to cover expenses for the collection of debt
- collision coverage — Collision coverage is insurance cover for vehicle accidents.
- colonic irrigation — Colonic irrigation is a medical procedure in which a person's colon is washed by injecting water or other fluids into it.
- come to grips with — If you come to grips with a problem, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- commanding officer — A commanding officer is an officer who is in charge of a military unit.
- commercial college — a college providing tuition in commercial skills, such as shorthand and book-keeping
- common wintergreen — a plant (Pyrola minor) of temperate and arctic regions, having rounded leaves and small pink globose flowers: family Pyrolaceae
- compartmentalizing — Present participle of compartmentalize.
- concurring opinion — an opinion issued by one or more judges which agrees with the decision reached by the majority of the court, but offers additional or different reasons for reaching that decision
- concussion grenade — a grenade designed to inflict damage by the force of its detonation rather than by the fragmentation of its casing.
- configuration item — (jargon) Hardware or software, or an aggregate of both, which is designated by the project configuration manager (or contracting agency) for configuration management.
- congregate housing — a type of housing in which each individual or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but shares with other residents a common dining room, recreational room, or other facilities.