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17-letter words containing i, a

  • barbed-wire grass — an aromatic grass, Cymbopogon refractus, with groups of seed heads resembling barbed wire
  • barber of seville — Italian Il barbiere di Siviglia. a comic opera (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini based on a comedy (1775) by Beaumarchais.
  • bari delle puglie — Italian name of Bari.
  • barmecide (feast) — a pretended feast with no food
  • barrel distortion — distortion of an image produced by an optical system that causes straight lines at image margins to bulge outwards
  • barrow-in-furness — an industrial town in NW England, in S Cumbria. Pop: 47 194 (2001)
  • bartholin's gland — either of two small glands near the vaginal opening: during sexual excitement they secrete a mucous lubricating substance
  • basal anaesthesia — preliminary and incomplete anaesthesia induced to prepare a surgical patient for total anaesthesia with another agent
  • base lending rate — a minimum interest rate on which financial institutions base the rates they use for lending
  • baseboard heating — a heating system by pipes, through which steam or hot water circulates, near the base of the walls of rooms
  • basic proposition — protocol (def 6).
  • basic service set — (networking)   (BSS) A wireless local area network and all the wireless devices (e.g. PCs and laptops) that are associated with it. A BSS may or may not include an access point and is identified by a BSSID.
  • bathroom fittings — plumbing fixtures or accessories suitable for use in a bathroom
  • battle of britain — (in World War II) the series of aerial combats that took place between British and German aircraft during the autumn of 1940 and that included the severe bombardment of British cities.
  • be a box of birds — to be very well indeed
  • be running scared — If you say that a person or group is running scared, you mean that they are frightened of what someone might do to them or what might happen.
  • be that as it may — You say 'Be that as it may' when you want to move onto another subject or go further with the discussion, without deciding whether what has just been said is right or wrong.
  • beardmore glacier — one of the largest glaciers, in central Antarctica. About 125 miles (200 km) long.
  • beat one's brains — to try hard to remember, understand, or solve something
  • beauty specialist — a person who helps someone to improve their beauty, such as a make-up artist
  • beefsteak begonia — an ornamental plant, Begonia erythrophylla, having light-pink flowers and nearly round, thick, fleshy leaves that are red on the underside.
  • beer and skittles — enjoyment or pleasure
  • 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
  • behind one's back — without one's knowledge; secretly or deceitfully
  • bell laboratories — One of AT&T's research sites, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA. It was the birthplace of the transistor, Unix, C and C++ and the current home of research on Plan 9 and ODE.
  • bell-hanger's bit — a bit for drilling small holes through studs or the like.
  • bellflower family — the plant family Campanulaceae, characterized by chiefly herbaceous plants having simple, alternate leaves and solitary or clustered flowers with a bell-shaped, five-lobed, often blue or purple corolla, and including the harebell, Canterbury bells, and balloon flower.
  • benjamin banneker — Benjamin, 1731–1806, U.S. mathematician, natural historian, and astronomer.
  • benjamin franklin — Aretha [uh-ree-thuh] /əˈri θə/ (Show IPA), born 1942, U.S. singer.
  • benjamin-constant — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
  • benoit mandelbrot — (person)   /ben'wa man'dl-bro/ Benoit B. Mandelbrot. The IBM scientist who wrote several original books on fractals and gave his name to the set he was discovered, the Mandelbrot set and coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break".
  • 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.
  • betagalactosidase — any of a family of enzymes capable of liberating galactose from carbohydrates.
  • beyond comparison — outstanding, without equal
  • bighorn mountains — range of the Rocky Mountains in N Wyo. and S Mont.: highest peak, 13,165 ft (4,013 m)
  • bill of adventure — a certificate made out by a merchant to show that goods handled by him and his agents are the property of another party at whose risk the dealing is done
  • bill of attainder — (formerly) a legislative act finding a person guilty without trial of treason or felony and declaring him attainted
  • binary opposition — a relation between the members of a pair of linguistic items, as a pair of distinctive features, such that one is the absence of the other, as voicelessness and voice, or that one is at the opposite pole from the other, as stridency and mellowness.
  • binet-simon scale — a test comprising questions and tasks, used to determine the mental age of subjects, usually children
  • binocular rivalry — the phenomenon whereby one is unable to see simultaneously different images presented one to each eye; usually in some areas of the eye the image presented to the left eye is seen, in others that presented to the right eye
  • biological father — the man whose semen fertilized the ovum from which a child was born
  • biological marker — a substance, physiological characteristic, gene, etc that indicates, or may indicate, the presence of disease, a physiological abnormality or a psychological condition
  • biological mother — the mother who gave birth to a child
  • biological parent — a parent who has conceived (biological mother) or sired (biological father) rather than adopted a child and whose genes are therefore transmitted to the child.
  • biological rhythm — biorhythm.
  • biological shield — a protective shield impervious to radiation, esp the thick concrete wall surrounding the core of a nuclear reactor
  • biological weapon — a weapon which uses a biological agent to harm people and other living organisms
  • biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
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