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17-letter words containing h, i, r, e

  • at the service of — To be at the service of a person or organization means to be available to help or be used by that person or organization.
  • at their own game — If you beat someone at their own game, you use the same methods that they have used, but more successfully, so that you gain an advantage over them.
  • attraction sphere — centrosphere (sense 1)
  • audience research — research into the make-up and habits of the audience of a particular television or radio programme or network
  • australopithecine — any of various extinct apelike primates of the genus Australopithecus and related genera, remains of which have been discovered in southern and E Africa. Some species are estimated to be over 4.5 million years old
  • authoritativeness — having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority: an authoritative opinion.
  • back on the rails — If something is back on the rails, it is beginning to be successful again after a period when it almost failed.
  • bacteriorhodopsin — a purple protein containing retinal and found in the plasma membrane of certain bacteria (genus Halobacterium): it directly supplies electrochemical energy from sunlight
  • baseboard heating — a heating system by pipes, through which steam or hot water circulates, near the base of the walls of rooms
  • be over the limit — If someone is over the limit, they have drunk more alcohol than they are legally allowed to when driving a vehicle.
  • behaviour therapy — any of various means of treating psychological disorders, such as desensitization, aversion therapy, and instrumental conditioning, that depend on the patient systematically learning new modes of behaviour
  • bell-hanger's bit — a bit for drilling small holes through studs or the like.
  • belted kingfisher — a grayish-blue, North American kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon, having a white breast marked with a grayish-blue band.
  • bergisch gladbach — city in W Germany, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia: pop. 105,000
  • bergisch-gladbach — an industrial city in W Germany, near Cologne.
  • best first search — (algorithm)   A graph search algorithm which optimises breadth first search by ordering all current paths according to some heuristic. The heuristic attempts to predict how close the end of a path is to a solution. Paths which are judged to be closer to a solution are extended first. See also beam search, hill climbing.
  • biological father — the man whose semen fertilized the ovum from which a child was born
  • biological mother — the mother who gave birth to a child
  • biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
  • bird's-eye chilli — a small red hot-tasting chilli
  • birth certificate — Your birth certificate is an official document which gives details of your birth, such as the date and place of your birth, and the names of your parents.
  • blue-headed vireo — solitary vireo.
  • board-and-shingle — a small dwelling with wooden walls and a shingle roof
  • boat-billed heron — a nocturnal, tropical American wading bird (Cochlearius cochlearius) with a large, broad bill: it is the only member of a family (Cochleariidae) of wading birds
  • bohemian brethren — a Protestant Christian sect formed in the 15th century from various Hussite groups, which rejected oaths and military service and advocated a pure and disciplined spiritual life. It was reorganized in 1722 as the Moravian Church
  • boiler horsepower — a unit of measurement of the ability of a boiler to evaporate water, usually given as the ability to evaporate 34½ pounds (15.6 kg) of water an hour, into dry saturated steam from and at 212°F (100°C).
  • brain haemorrhage — bleeding into the brain
  • branch prediction — (processor, algorithm)   A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.
  • breach of promise — (formerly) failure to carry out one's promise to marry
  • breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
  • brezhnev doctrine — the doctrine expounded by Leonid Brezhnev in November 1968 affirming the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the affairs of Communist countries to strengthen Communism.
  • brightening agent — a compound applied to a textile to increase its brightness by the conversion of ultraviolet radiation to visible (blue) light, used in detergents
  • brighton and hove — a city and unitary authority in S England, in East Sussex. Pop: 251 500 (2003 est). Area: 72 sq km (28 sq miles)
  • bring up the rear — to be at the back in a procession, race, etc
  • british cameroons — a former British trust territory of West Africa
  • british israelite — a member of a religious movement claiming that the British people are descended from the lost tribes of Israel
  • british-cameroons — German Kamerun. a region in W Africa: a German protectorate 1884–1919; divided in 1919 into British and French mandates.
  • broad-winged hawk — an American hawk, Buteo platypterus, dark brown above and white barred with rufous below.
  • broadview heights — a town in N Ohio.
  • broken white line — a regular, discontinuous white line on a roadway, indicating that overtaking is permitted
  • bursting strength — the capacity of a thing or substance to resist change when under pressure.
  • calcium hydroxide — a white crystalline slightly soluble alkali with many uses, esp in cement, water softening, and the neutralization of acid soils. Formula: Ca(OH)2
  • carbon disulphide — a colourless slightly soluble volatile flammable poisonous liquid commonly having a disagreeable odour due to the presence of impurities: used as an organic solvent and in the manufacture of rayon and carbon tetrachloride. Formula: CS2
  • carbon microphone — a microphone in which a diaphragm, vibrated by sound waves, applies a varying pressure to a container packed with carbon granules, altering the resistance of the carbon. A current flowing through the carbon is thus modulated at the frequency of the sound waves
  • carbonyl chloride — phosgene
  • carboxyhemoglobin — a compound formed in the blood when carbon monoxide occupies the positions on the hemoglobin molecule normally taken by oxygen, resulting in cellular oxygen starvation
  • cardiogenic shock — a type of shock caused by decreased cardiac output despite adequate blood volume, owing to a disease of the heart itself, as myocardial infarction, or any other factor that interferes with the filling or emptying of the heart.
  • casting the runes — (jargon)   What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program because it never works for anyone else; especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight.
  • castle in the air — a hope or desire unlikely to be realized; daydream
  • cathedral ceiling — a high ceiling formed by or suggesting an open-timbered roof.
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