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16-letter words containing o, p, e, r

  • atmospheric tide — a movement of atmospheric masses caused by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon and by daily solar heating.
  • attitude problem — a frame of mind perceived by others to be hostile or uncooperative
  • australopithecus — an extinct genus of small-brained,large-toothed bipedal hominids that lived in Africa between one and four million years ago.
  • autoethnographic — Using ethnographic techniques to describe one's own life, or events in which one is a participant.
  • automatic repeat — a key on the keyboard of a typewriter, computer, etc, which, when depressed continuously, produces the character repeatedly until the key is released
  • autostereoscopic — Of or pertaining to autostereoscopy.
  • auxiliary police — a part-time reserve attached to a regular police force
  • aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
  • azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
  • background paper — a report or other piece of writing that is intended to provide contextual and historical information that will help people understand a particular topic or situation
  • bacterioplankton — (biology) The bacterial component of marine plankton.
  • balance of power — The balance of power is the way in which power is distributed between rival groups or countries.
  • bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
  • barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
  • bargaining power — the ability of a person, group, or organization to exert influence over another party in a negotiation in order to achieve a deal which is favourable to themselves
  • bargaining scope — the range of topics within the scope of a particular set of negotiations leading to a collective agreement
  • basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
  • batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
  • bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
  • battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
  • bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
  • behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
  • behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
  • benzoyl peroxide — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble, explosive solid, C 7 H 5 O 4 , used chiefly as a bleaching agent for flour, fats, oils, and waxes, and as a catalyst in polymerization reactions.
  • bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
  • beryllium copper — a copper alloy containing a small amount of beryllium and often some nickel or cobalt, having high strength, hardness, and electrical conductivity.
  • bessemer process — (formerly) a process for producing steel by blowing air through molten pig iron at about 1250°C in a Bessemer converter: silicon, manganese, and phosphorus impurities are removed and the carbon content is controlled
  • binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
  • bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
  • bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • bleaching powder — a white powder with the odour of chlorine, consisting of chlorinated calcium hydroxide with an approximate formula CaCl(OCl).4H2O. It is used in solution as a bleaching agent and disinfectant
  • boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • brake horsepower — the rate at which an engine does work, expressed in horsepower. It is measured by the resistance of an applied brake
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • break-even point — When a company reaches break-even point, the money it makes from the sale of goods or services is just enough to cover the cost of supplying those goods or services, but not enough to make a profit.
  • bristlecone pine — a coniferous tree, Pinus aristata, of the western US, bearing cones with bristle-like prickles: one of the longest-lived trees, useful in radiocarbon dating
  • broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
  • brompton mixture — a mixture of narcotics, tranquilizers, and alcohol, used to kill pain for terminally ill patients
  • bronchopneumonia — inflammation of the lungs, originating in the bronchioles
  • broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.
  • brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
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