12-letter words containing n, c, b
- brachycranic — having a cranial index of 81.0–85.4.
- bradykinetic — slowness of movement, as found, for example, in Parkinson's disease.
- brain-picker — the act of obtaining information or ideas by questioning another person.
- branch depot — one of a several depots receiving stock from the same central supplier
- branch plant — a plant or factory in Canada belonging to a company whose headquarters are in another country
- branch point — Electricity. a point in an electric network at which three or more conductors meet.
- branch water — water from a stream, as opposed to mineral or soda water
- braunschweig — Brunswick
- brazen-faced — shameless or impudent
- breakdancing — a type of vigorous dance
- breckinridge — John Cabell1821-75; vice president of the U.S. (1857-61); Confederate general
- brick veneer — (in Australia) a timber-framed house with a brick exterior
- bring action — to start a lawsuit
- broadcasting — Broadcasting is the making and sending out of television and radio programmes.
- broken chord — a chord played as an arpeggio
- broken-check — a check pattern in which the rectangular shapes are slightly irregular.
- bromoacetone — a colorless and highly toxic liquid, CH 2 BrCOCH 3 , used as a lachrymatory compound in tear gas and chemical warfare gas.
- bronchogenic — bronchial in origin
- bronchoscope — an instrument for examining and providing access to the interior of the bronchial tubes
- bronchoscopy — an examination by means of a bronchoscope.
- bronchospasm — an abnormal contraction of the bronchi resulting in restriction of the airway
- broncobuster — (in the western US and Canada) a cowboy who breaks in broncos or wild horses
- brown canker — a fungous disease of roses, characterized by leaf and flower lesions, stem cankers surrounded by a reddish-purple border, and dieback.
- brown hackle — an artificial fly having a peacock herl body, golden tag and tail, and brown hackle.
- brunelleschi — Filippo (fiˈlippo). 1377–1446, Italian architect, whose works in Florence include the dome of the cathedral, the Pazzi chapel of Santa Croce, and the church of San Lorenzo
- bubble dance — a solo dance by a nude or nearly nude woman, as in a burlesque show, using one or more balloons for covering.
- buccaneering — If you describe someone as buccaneering, you mean that they enjoy being involved in risky or even dishonest activities, especially in order to make money.
- buccaneerish — of or relating to a buccaneer
- buccolingual — of or relating to the cheek and tongue.
- bucket bench — a Pennsylvania Dutch dresser having a lower portion closed with doors for milk pails, an open shelf for water pails, and an upper section with shallow drawers.
- buckle under — If you buckle under to a person or a situation, you do what they want you to do, even though you do not want to do it.
- buckler fern — any of various ferns of the genus Dryopteris, such as D. dilatata (broad buckler fern): family Polypodiaceae
- buffet lunch — a lunch at which people stand up and help themselves from the table
- bumping race — (esp at Oxford and Cambridge) a race in which rowing eights start an equal distance one behind the other and each tries to bump the boat in front
- bunco artist — a confidence trickster or con artist
- buoyancy aid — a type of usually foam-filled lifejacket designed for use in sports such as canoeing
- bushwhacking — to make one's way through woods by cutting at undergrowth, branches, etc.
- butter icing — a mixture of butter and icing sugar used for filling or topping cakes
- bye-election — a special election, not held at the time of a general election, to fill a vacancy in Parliament.
- cabinet wine — cabinet (def 10).
- cabinet-wine — a piece of furniture with shelves, drawers, etc., for holding or displaying items: a curio cabinet; a file cabinet.
- cabinetmaker — A cabinetmaker is a person who makes high-quality wooden furniture.
- cable length — a unit of length in nautical use that has various values, including 100 fathoms (600 feet)
- cable-laying — involved in or connected to the activity of laying cables
- cablecasting — relating to broadcasting by cable
- cadet branch — the family or family branch of a younger son
- calabar bean — the dark brown very poisonous seed of a leguminous woody climbing plant, Physostigma venenosum, of tropical Africa, used as a source of the drug physostigmine
- calibrations — Plural form of calibration.
- call-by-name — (reduction) (CBN) (Normal order reduction, leftmost, outermost reduction). An argument passing convention (first provided by ALGOL 60?) where argument expressions are passed unevaluated. This is usually implemented by passing a pointer to a thunk - some code which will return the value of the argument and an environment giving the values of its free variables. This evaluation strategy is guaranteed to reach a normal form if one exists. When used to implement functional programming languages, call-by-name is usually combined with graph reduction to avoid repeated evaluation of the same expression. This is then known as call-by-need. The opposite of call-by-name is call-by-value where arguments are evaluated before they are passed to a function. This is more efficient but is less likely to terminate in the presence of infinite data structures and recursive functions. Arguments to macros are usually passed using call-by-name.
- call-by-need — (reduction) A reduction strategy which delays evaluation of function arguments until their values are needed. A value is needed if it is an argument to a primitive function or it is the condition in a conditional. Call-by-need is one aspect of lazy evaluation. The term first appears in Chris Wadsworth's thesis "Semantics and Pragmatics of the Lambda calculus" (Oxford, 1971, p. 183). It was used later, by J. Vuillemin in his thesis (Stanford, 1973).