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17-letter words containing i, t, a, r

  • bacteriorhodopsin — a purple protein containing retinal and found in the plasma membrane of certain bacteria (genus Halobacterium): it directly supplies electrochemical energy from sunlight
  • balanced literacy — a method of teaching reading in which phonics and whole language approaches are both used to maximize student learning.
  • baltimore clipper — a small, fast American sailing vessel of the early 19th century, having a sharp hull form and two masts with a pronounced rake and carrying a brig or schooner rig.
  • bar-tailed godwit — a large wader, Limosa lapponica, of the family Scolopacidae which, in migrating from Alaska to New Zealand, makes the longest journey without stopping for food taken by any animal
  • 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
  • bartholin's gland — either of two small glands near the vaginal opening: during sexual excitement they secrete a mucous lubricating substance
  • 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.
  • beat one's brains — to try hard to remember, understand, or solve something
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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".
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
  • biotransformation — the metabolizing of some substance, esp. a drug, in the body
  • 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.
  • 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-tailed deer — a variety of mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, having a tail that is black above.
  • blackout curtains — thick, lined curtains designed to shut out all daylight and keep a room in complete darkness
  • 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.
  • board of estimate — a special organ of a municipal government, as of New York City, composed of the mayor, the president of the city council, and the controller, and charged with approving the city's budget and fiscal matters.
  • 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
  • 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
  • bombardier beetle — any of various small carabid beetles of the genus Brachinus, esp B. crepitans of Europe, which defend themselves by ejecting a jet of volatile fluid
  • 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.
  • bore-stroke ratio — The bore-stroke ratio is the ratio of bore to stroke. A ratio of 1:1 is referred to informally as square.
  • 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 peridot — a light yellowish-green tourmaline used as a gem: not a true peridot.
  • brazilian rhatany — See under rhatany (def 1).
  • breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
  • bricks and mortar — You can use bricks and mortar to refer to houses and other buildings, especially when they are considered as an investment.
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