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17-letter words containing i, n, a

  • 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".
  • 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 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 weapon — a weapon which uses a biological agent to harm people and other living organisms
  • biotransformation — the metabolizing of some substance, esp. a drug, in the body
  • birth of a nation — an American film (1915), directed by D. W. Griffith.
  • bitter almond oil — almond oil (def 2).
  • bitter-almond-oil — Also called sweet almond oil, expressed almond oil. a colorless to pale yellow fatty oil expressed from the seeds of the sweet almond, used in preparing perfumes and confections.
  • black nationalism — a movement advocating the establishment of a separate black nation within the U.S.
  • black renaissance — a renewal and flourishing of black literary and musical culture during the years after World War I in the Harlem section of New York City.
  • black-box testing — functional testing
  • blackout curtains — thick, lined curtains designed to shut out all daylight and keep a room in complete darkness
  • blackwells island — a former name of Roosevelt Island.
  • bland-allison act — an act of Congress (1878) requiring the federal government to purchase at the market price from two to four million dollars' worth of silver monthly for conversion into silver dollars containing 16 times more silver per coin than gold in dollar coins of gold.
  • blind carbon copy — a duplicate of anything written or typed, or a copy of an email or other electronic document, that is sent to someone whose name is not visible to the primary addressee. Abbreviation: bcc.
  • block association — an association for the residents of a particular block in a neighbourhood to discuss and act on matters of common concern
  • blocking antibody — Immunology. an antibody that partly combines with an antigen and interferes with cell-mediated immunity, thereby preventing an allergic reaction.
  • blood transfusion — A blood transfusion is a process in which blood is injected into the body of a person who is badly injured or ill.
  • blowpipe analysis — a type of chemical analysis in which the intensely hot flame of a blowpipe vaporizes a mineral or other substance with a characteristically colored flame and a unique odor, so as to identify chemical elements in a substance
  • blue false indigo — a North American plant, Baptisia australis, of the legume family, having wedge-shaped leaflets and blue, clustered flowers.
  • board and lodging — If you are provided with board and lodging, you are provided with food and a place to sleep, especially as part of the conditions of a job.
  • 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
  • boatswain's chair — a seat consisting of a short flat board slung from ropes, used to support a person working on the side of a vessel or in its rigging
  • body modification — any method of permanently adorning the body, including tattooing and piercing
  • 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
  • bond immunization — immunization (def 2).
  • book depreciation — Book depreciation is depreciation in a company's internal financial records that is different from the amount that is used for taxes.
  • boolean operation — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • boothia peninsula — a peninsula of N Canada: the northernmost part of the mainland of North America, lying west of the Gulf of Boothia, an arm of the Arctic Ocean
  • bouncebackability — the ability to recover after a setback, esp in sport
  • bradford spinning — a wool-spinning method in which the fibers are oiled prior to combing and subsequently spun into worsted yarn.
  • 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.
  • brazilian emerald — a green variety of tourmaline used as a gem: not a true emerald.
  • brazilian peridot — a light yellowish-green tourmaline used as a gem: not a true peridot.
  • brazilian rhatany — See under rhatany (def 1).
  • breakdown service — a service that provides assistance to motorists who break down
  • breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
  • bricks and clicks — a combination of traditional business carried out on physical premises and internet trading
  • bricks and mortar — You can use bricks and mortar to refer to houses and other buildings, especially when they are considered as an investment.
  • brigadier general — In the United States, a brigadier general is a senior officer in the armed forces who is often in charge of a brigade and has a rank above colonel and below major general.
  • 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)
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