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21-letter words containing o, l

  • bow to the inevitable — If someone bows to the inevitable and does something that they do not want to do, they do it, because circumstances force them to do it.
  • break the fourth wall — (esp of a character in a television programme, film, or play) to refer to, acknowledge, or address the audience, usually for comedic effect or as an avante-garde technique
  • breakthrough bleeding — bleeding from the uterus that occurs between menstrual periods
  • breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
  • broadleaved whitebeam — a whitebeam, Sorbus latifolia, widely found in France and England, also planted as an ornamental
  • bromine pentafluoride — a colorless, corrosive liquid, BrF 5 , used as an oxidizer in liquid rocket propellants.
  • buffalo carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
  • built-in obsolescence — a method of stimulating consumer demand by designing products that wear out or become outmoded after limited use.
  • bulletin board system — (communications, application)   (BBS, bboard /bee'bord/, message board, forum; plural: BBSes) A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas. The term comes from physical pieces of board on which people can pin messages written on paper for general consumption - a "physical bulletin board". Ward Christensen, the programmer and operator of the first BBS (on-line 1978-02-16) called it a CBBS for "computer bulletin board system". Since the rise of the World-Wide Web, the term has become antiquated, though the concept is more popular than ever, with many websites featuring discussion areas where users can post messages for public consumption. Apart from public message areas, some BBSes provided archives of files, personal electronic mail and other services of interest to the system operator (sysop). Thousands of BBSes around the world were run from amateurs' homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes were traditionally the domain of hobbyists, many connected directly to the Internet (accessed via telnet), others were operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they helped connect hackers and users in the personal-micro and let them exchange code. Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
  • burn the midnight oil — to work or study late into the night
  • businessman's holiday — busman's holiday.
  • butterfly common lisp — A parallel version of Common LISP for the BBN Butterfly computer.
  • button up (one's lip) — to refrain from talking; esp., to keep a secret
  • by fair means or foul — If someone tries to achieve something by fair means or foul, they use every means possible in order to achieve it, and they do not care if their behaviour is dishonest or unfair.
  • cancellation deadline — A cancellation deadline is a date before which you must cancel a hotel reservation without paying any money.
  • canticle of canticles — another name for the Song of Solomon, used in the Douay Bible
  • cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
  • carlos saavedra lamas — Carlos [kahr-laws] /ˈkɑr lɔs/ (Show IPA), 1878?–1959, Argentine statesman and diplomat: Nobel Peace Prize 1936.
  • caroline of brunswick — 1768–1821, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom: tried for adultery (1820)
  • casing collar locator — A casing collar locator is a tool that is placed down the borehole to allow depths to be measured by detecting the position of the casing collar.
  • castellon de la plana — a port in E Spain. Pop: 160 714 (2003 est)
  • catalyst-to-oil ratio — The catalyst-to-oil ratio is the amount of a catalyst relative to the amount of oil, which with temperature affects the yield of a process.
  • catch one flat footed — having flatfeet.
  • caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
  • central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
  • central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
  • character development — the portrayal of people in a work of fiction in such a way that the reader or audience seems to learn more about them as they develop
  • charge-coupled device — an electronic device, used in imaging and signal processing, in which information is represented as packets of electric charge that are stored in an array of tiny closely spaced capacitors and can be moved from one capacitor to another in a controlled way
  • chequebook journalism — Chequebook journalism is the practice of paying people large sums of money for information about crimes or famous people in order to get material for newspaper articles.
  • chloroformyl chloride — phosgene.
  • chocolate chip cookie — a biscuit containing chips of chocolate
  • choledochojejunostomy — (medicine) The surgical formation of an opening between the common bile duct and the jejunum.
  • circle of convergence — Mathematics. a circle associated with a given power series such that the series converges for all values of the variable inside the circle and diverges for all values outside it.
  • circle of declination — hour circle.
  • circular polarization — electromagnetic radiation (esp light) in which the electric field vector describes a circle about the direction of propagation at any point in the path of the radiation
  • civil rights movement — campaign for human freedoms
  • civilian review board — a quasi-judicial board of appointed or elected citizens that investigates complaints against the police.
  • class-relation method — (programming)   A design technique based on the concepts of object-oriented programming and the Entity-Relationship model from the French company Softeam.
  • clayton antitrust act — an act of Congress in 1914 supplementing the Sherman Antitrust Act and establishing the FTC.
  • clayton-bulwer treaty — an agreement between the U.S. and Great Britain in 1850 guaranteeing that any canal built to connect the Atlantic and Pacific across Central America would be jointly controlled, open to all nations, and unfortified.
  • clean someone's clock — an instrument for measuring and recording time, especially by mechanical means, usually with hands or changing numbers to indicate the hour and minute: not designed to be worn or carried about.
  • clement of alexandria — Saint. original name Titus Flavius Clemens. ?150–?215 ad, Greek Christian theologian: head of the catechetical school at Alexandria; teacher of Origen. Feast day: Dec 5
  • clerk to the justices — (in England) a legally qualified person who sits in court with lay justices to advise them on points of law
  • clinical psychologist — a practitioner of clinical psychology
  • clone-and-hack coding — case and paste
  • closed-angle glaucoma — angle-closure glaucoma. See under glaucoma.
  • clostridium difficile — Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that causes severe diarrhoea. It is commonly found in hospitals. C.diff is also used.
  • cognitive development — the process of acquiring intelligence and increasingly advanced thought and problem-solving ability from infancy to adulthood.
  • collective bargaining — When a trade union engages in collective bargaining, it has talks with an employer about its members' pay and working conditions.
  • college of propaganda — information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
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