16-letter words containing n, a, b, e
- electric blanket — electrically-heated bedcover
- embarkation card — an official document that allows travellers to leave a country by boarding a ship or plane
- emotional labour — work that requires good interpersonal skills
- endocannabinoids — Plural form of endocannabinoid.
- erymanthian boar — a wild boar that ravaged the district around Mount Erymanthus: captured by Hercules as his fourth labour
- exhibition match — a sports match which is not part of a competition but instead serves the function of demonstrating the skills of the players
- expansion bottle — a tank collecting coolant from a radiator while an engine is heated, and from which the coolant returns to the radiator when the engine cools
- experience table — an actuarial table, esp a mortality table based on past statistics
- fancy dress ball — a ball at which the guests wear fancy dress
- fantasy baseball — imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
- fashion business — the business dealing with style in clothes, cosmetics, behaviour, etc, esp the latest or most admired style
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- fibonacci number — a number in the Fibonacci sequence, each of which is the sum of the previous two
- fibonacci series — a sequence of integers in which each integer (Fibonacci number) after the second is the sum of the two preceding integers; specif., the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . .
- fisherman's bend — a knot made by taking a round turn on the object to which the rope is to be fastened, passing the end of the rope around the standing part and under the round turn, and securing the end.
- flabbergastation — (colloquial) Bewildered shock or surprise; the state or condition of being flabbergasted.
- flabbergastingly — Surprisingly, astonishingly or amazingly.
- flat-bed scanner — a type of optical scanner having a flat, stationary surface on which a page is scanned by a moving head.
- flying ambulance — an aircraft used to take sick or injured people to hospital
- forbid the banns — to raise an objection to a marriage announced in this way
- forced vibration — Forced vibration is a type of vibration in which a force is repeatedly applied to a mechanical system.
- fortin barometer — an adjustable cistern barometer, the most common of those employing mercury.
- freeboard length — the length of a vessel, measured on the summer load line from the fore side of the stem to some part of the stern, usually the after side of the rudderpost.
- frontier orbital — the highest-energy occupied orbital or lowest-energy unoccupied orbital in a molecule. Such orbitals have a large influence on chemical properties
- fundamental bass — a bass consisting of the roots of the chords employed.
- galvanic battery — battery (def 1a).
- gas blowoff line — A gas blowoff line is a safety device to control sudden increases in pressure.
- general assembly — the legislature in some states of the U.S.
- generalisability — Non-Oxford British standard spelling of generalizability.
- generalizability — The quality of being generalizable.
- gingerbread palm — doom palm.
- gingerbread plum — a tree, Neocarya macrophylla, of western Africa, bearing a large, edible, starchy fruit.
- gingerbread tree — a W African tree, Parinari macrophyllum, with large mealy edible fruits (gingerbread plums): family Chrysobalanaceae
- globigerina ooze — a calcareous deposit occurring upon ocean beds and consisting mainly of the shells of dead foraminifers, especially globigerina.
- go/be easy on sb — If you tell someone to go easy on, or be easy on, a particular person, you are telling them not to punish or treat that person very severely.
- grant of probate — a certificate stating that a will is valid
- granville-barker — Harley, 1877–1946, English dramatist, actor, and critic.
- great blue heron — a large American heron, Ardea herodias, having bluish-gray plumage.
- green vegetables — green edible plants
- grin and bear it — to suffer trouble or hardship without complaint
- ground substance — Also called matrix. the homogeneous substance in which the fibers and cells of connective tissue are embedded.
- growth substance — any substance, produced naturally by a plant or manufactured commercially, that, in very low concentrations, affects plant growth; a plant hormone
- hanging wardrobe — a wardrobe containing a rail with a large amount of space underneath, so that clothes can be hung on hangers placed onto the rail
- harleian library — a large library of manuscripts collected by the British statesman Robert Harley and his son and now housed in the British Museum.
- have been around — be experienced
- have no business — an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming.
- have sb to thank — If you say that you have someone to thank for something, you mean that you are grateful to them because they caused it to happen.
- hebbian learning — (artificial intelligence) The most common way to train a neural network; a kind of unsupervised learning; named after canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O. Hebb. The algorithm is based on Hebb's Postulate, which states that where one cell's firing repeatedly contributes to the firing of another cell, the magnitude of this contribution will tend to increase gradually with time. This means that what may start as little more than a coincidental relationship between the firing of two nearby neurons becomes strongly causal. Despite limitations with Hebbian learning, e.g., the inability to learn certain patterns, variations such as Signal Hebbian Learning and Differential Hebbian Learning are still used.
- hemangioblastoma — (medicine) Any of several benign neoplasm tumours of the brain.
- hendecasyllables — Plural form of hendecasyllable.