17-letter words containing o, b, y, l
- downward mobility — movement from one social level to a higher one (upward mobility) or a lower one (downward mobility) as by changing jobs or marrying.
- downwardly mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- downwardly-mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- drive-by download — an incidence of an unwanted program being automatically downloaded to a computer, often without the user's knowledge
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- employee benefits — benefits, such as health insurance, pension payments, or childcare, given to employees in addition to their usual salary or wage
- eyelet embroidery — a piece of embroidery decorated with such work
- four-rowed barley — a class of barley having, in each spike, six rows of grain, with two pairs of rows overlapping.
- glastonbury chair — a folding chair having legs crossed front-to-back and having arms connected to the back and to the front seat rail.
- globus hystericus — the sensation of having a lump in the throat or difficulty in swallowing for which no medical cause can be found.
- gunboat diplomacy — diplomatic relations involving the use or threat of military force, especially by a powerful nation against a weaker one.
- haemoglobinopathy — (medicine) Any of a group of inherited disorders in which haemoglobin does not function properly.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- house of assembly — the legislature or the lower house of the legislature in certain countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
- hydrofluorocarbon — Any of a class of partly chlorinated and fluorinated hydrocarbons, used as an alternative to chlorofluorocarbons in foam production, refrigeration, and other processes.
- hyperbolic cosine — one of a group of functions of an angle expressed as a relationship between the distances of a point on a hyperbola to the origin and to the coordinate axes; cosh
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperbolic spiral — rθ = a, (where a is a constant)
- impressionability — easily impressed or influenced; susceptible: an impressionable youngster.
- in broad daylight — openly, in full public view
- incommunicability — incapable of being communicated, imparted, shared, etc.
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- insurmountability — incapable of being surmounted, passed over, or overcome; insuperable: an insurmountable obstacle.
- interlibrary loan — a system by which one library obtains a work for a user by borrowing it from another library.
- irreconcilability — incapable of being brought into harmony or adjustment; incompatible: irreconcilable differences.
- irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
- joachim du bellay — Joachim [French zhaw-a-keem] /French ʒɔ aˈkim/ (Show IPA), Bellay, Joachim du.
- john of salisbury — c1115–80, English prelate and scholar.
- keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
- know only by name — to be familiar with the name of but not know personally
- laboratory school — a school maintained by a college or university for the training of student teachers.
- liability account — A liability account is an account recording a company's liabilities.
- liberal democracy — a democracy based on the recognition of individual rights and freedoms, in which decisions from direct or representative processes prevail in many policy areas
- liberty of speech — freedom of speech.
- lowbush blueberry — a shrub, Vaccinium angustifolium, of eastern North America, having small, white flowers and blue-black fruit.
- metabolic pathway — biochemistry: sequence of reactions within a cell or organism
- methyltheobromine — caffeine.
- microbiologically — With regard to microbiology.
- mind-body problem — the problem of explaining the relation of the mind to the body.
- molecular biology — the branch of biology that deals with the nature of biological phenomena at the molecular level through the study of DNA and RNA, proteins, and other macromolecules involved in genetic information and cell function, characteristically making use of advanced tools and techniques of separation, manipulation, imaging, and analysis.
- monarch butterfly — a large, deep-orange butterfly, Danaus plexippus, having black and white markings, the larvae of which feed on the leaves of milkweed.
- movable-do system — a system of solmization in which the syllable do can be transposed to the tonic of any key.
- national assembly — the body constituted by the French Third Estate in June 1789 after the calling of the Estates General. It was dissolved in Sept 1791 to be replaced by the new Legislative Assembly
- naval observatory — an astronomical observatory located in Washington, D.C., operated by the U.S. government, and responsible for the U.S. time service.
- neurobiologically — In terms of or by means of neurobiology.
- non-assignability — capable of being specified: The word has no assignable meaning in our language.
- nonsense syllable — any of numerous letter combinations without meaning, used in learning experiments.
- not bat an eyelid — When something surprising or shocking happens, if someone doesn't bat an eyelid in British English, or doesn't bat an eye in American English, they remain calm and do not show any reaction.
- office by example — (language) (OBE) A sequel to QBE, described in publications by Moshe Zloof of IBM in the early 1980s but apparently never implemented.
- palaeoethnobotany — the study of fossil seeds and grains to further archaeological knowledge, esp of the domestication of cereals