19-letter words containing o, b, s, l
- honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
- hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
- hyperbolic cosecant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of hyperbolic sine
- incommensurableness — (rare) Incommensurability.
- incomprehensibility — impossible to understand or comprehend; unintelligible.
- internal-combustion — of or relating to an internal-combustion engine.
- isle of shoals boat — a sailing boat formerly used in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, rigged with two spritsails or gaff sails.
- isobutyl propionate — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 14 O 2 , used chiefly as a paint, varnish, and lacquer solvent.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- it would be wise to — If someone says to you that it would be wise to do something, they are advising you to do it, because it is the most sensible and reasonable action or decision in a particular situation.
- jewel in sb's crown — If you refer to an achievement or thing as the jewel in someone's crown, you mean that it is considered to be their greatest achievement or the thing they can be most proud of.
- kilobits per second — (unit) (kbps, kb/s) A unit of data rate where 1 kb/s = 1000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of storage where 1 Kb = 1024 bits (note upper case K).
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- lobby correspondent — a political correspondent who reports from parliament
- lobster-tail helmet — a burgonet fitted with a long, articulated tail of lames for protecting the nape of the neck, worn by cavalry in the 17th century.
- look sb up and down — If someone looks you up and down, they direct their eyes from your head to your feet, in a rude and superior way and often as though they disapprove of you.
- louis ii de bourbon — Condé, Prince de.
- malleable cast iron — white cast iron that has been malleablized.
- molecular biologist — a specialist in the study of biological phenomena at the molecular level
- mutual masturbation — the act of two or more people masturbating each other
- newtown st boswells — a village in SE Scotland, administrative centre of Scottish Borders: agricultural centre. Pop: 1199 (2001)
- nominative absolute — a construction consisting in English of a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun in the nominative case followed by a predicate lacking a finite verb, used as a loose modifier of the whole sentence, as the play done in The play done, the audience left the theater.
- non-distinguishable — to mark off as different (often followed by from or by): He was distinguished from the other boys by his height.
- non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
- normal distribution — a theoretical frequency distribution represented by a normal curve.
- not by a long sight — on no account; not at all
- object-oriented sql — (language) (OSQL) A functional language, a superset of SQL, used in Hewlett-Packard's OpenODB database system.
- observation balloon — a balloon that is used for gathering information and reconnaissance purposes and spotting aircraft
- obsolescence clause — a clause in an insurance policy that takes account of the obsolescence of the item insured in order to lower the amount to be paid out in the event of a claim
- olive-backed thrush — Swainson's thrush.
- on someone's behalf — in / on behalf of, as a representative of or a proxy for: On behalf of my colleagues, I address you tonight.
- on the baker's list — in good health
- optical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
- out at (the) elbows — shabby; poverty-stricken
- own flesh and blood — If you say that someone is your own flesh and blood, you are emphasizing that they are a member of your family.
- palaeoethnobotanist — someone who studies fossil seeds and grains to further archaeological knowledge, esp of the domestication of cereals
- palomar observatory — an astronomical observatory situated on Palomar Mountain in S California, having a 200-inch (508-cm) reflecting telescope and a 48-inch (122-cm) Schmidt telescope.
- personal belongings — possessions; things that belong to someone
- pointe-aux-trembles — a city in S Quebec, in E Canada, N of Montreal, on the St. Lawrence.
- portobello mushroom — a dark mushroom, strong in flavor, having a broad, flat cap that is often grilled and eaten
- post office problem — (algorithm) Given a set of points (in N dimensions), find another point which minimises the sum of the distances from that point to each of the others.
- postal savings bank — any of the savings banks formerly operated by local post offices and limited to small accounts.
- potassium bisulfate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KHSO 4 , used chiefly in the conversion of tartrates to bitartrates.
- profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
- provably unsolvable — The set or property of problems for which no algorithm at all exists. E.g. the Halting Problem. See also provably difficult.
- pseudo-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
- relational database — an electronic database comprising multiple files of related information, usually stored in tables of rows (records) and columns (fields), and allowing a link to be established between separate files that have a matching field, as a column of invoice numbers, so that the two files can be queried simultaneously by the user.