14-letter words containing o, s, p, r
- asthenospermic — (medicine) Characterised by or pertaining to asthenospermia, hence infertile.
- asthenospheric — relating to the asthenosphere
- astrocompasses — Plural form of astrocompass.
- astrophysicist — An astrophysicist is someone who studies astrophysics.
- at one's peril — If you say that someone does something at their peril, you are warning them that they will probably suffer as a result of doing it.
- audio response — a computer response that is audible rather than textual or graphical
- autoresponders — Plural form of autoresponder.
- autotransplant — autograft.
- b power supply — Electronics. B supply.
- backstrap loom — a simple horizontal loom, used especially in Central and South America, on which one of two beams holding the warp yarn is attached to a strap that passes across the weaver's back.
- bacteriophages — Plural form of bacteriophage.
- balsam of peru — an aromatic balsam that is obtained from the tropical South American leguminous tree Myroxylon pereirae and is similar to balsam of Tolu
- barbados pride — Also called bead tree. a tropical African and Asian tree, Adenanthera pavonina, of the legume family, having feathery foliage and bearing red seeds that are used in beadwork.
- bare ownership — ownership of a piece of property without the right to use and derive profit from that property
- basso profundo — (esp in operatic solo singing) a singer with a very deep bass voice
- beggar's opera — a ballad opera (1728) with text by John Gay and music arranged by John Pepusch.
- benday process — a process for adding tone or shading, as in reproducing drawings, by the overlay on the plate of patterns, as of dots
- biceps femoris — See under biceps.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
- blood pressure — the pressure exerted by the blood on the inner walls of the arteries, being relative to the elasticity and diameter of the vessels and the force of the heartbeat
- border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
- bow and scrape — to behave in an excessively deferential or obsequious way
- bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
- brewer's droop — an inability to get an erection because of excessive alcohol consumption
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- bronchospastic — of or relating to bronchospasms
- brood parasite — a young bird hatched and reared by birds of a different species as a result of brood parasitism.
- brownie points — a credit toward advancement or good standing gained especially by currying favor.
- bulk transport — the transport of large quantities of goods or commodities in lorries, ships, or by rail
- bursting point — the point at which normal capacity is exceeded.
- businessperson — Businesspeople are people who work in business.
- butcher's shop — a shop dedicated to the selling of meat
- c power supply — a battery or other source of power for supplying a constant voltage bias to a control electrode of a vacuum tube.
- c preprocessor — (tool, programming) (cpp) The standard Unix macro-expansion utility run as the first phase of the C compiler, cc. Cpp interprets lines beginning with "#" such as #define BUFFER_SIZE 256 as a textual assignment giving the symbol BUFFER_SIZE a value "256". Symbols defined with cpp are traditionally given upper case names to distinguish them from C identifiers. This symbol can be used later in the input, as in char input_buffer[BUFFER_SIZE]; This use of cpp to name constants, rather than writing these magic numbers inline, makes a program easier to read and maintain, especially if there is more than one occurrence of BUFFER_SIZE all of which must all have the same value. Cpp macros can have parameters: #define BIT(n) (1<<(n)) This can be used with any appropriate actual argument: msb = BIT(nbits-1); Note the parentheses around the "n" in the definition of BIT. Without these, operator precedence might mean that the expression substituted in place of n might not be interpreted correctly (though the example above would be OK). Cpp also supports conditional compilation with the use of #ifdef SYMBOL ... #else ... #endif and #if EXPR ... #else ... #endif constructs, where SYMBOL is a Cpp symbol which may or may not be defined and EXPR is an arithmetic expression involving only Cpp symbols, constants and C operators which Cpp can evaluate to a constant at compile time. The most widely used C preprocessor today is the GNU CPP, distributed as part of GCC.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp counselor — activities supervisor
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- campylotropous — (of an ovule) curved so that the micropyle and funiculus almost touch
- capparidaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Capparidaceae (or (Capparaceae), a family of plants, mostly shrubs including the caper, of warm tropical regions
- capriciousness — subject to, led by, or indicative of a sudden, odd notion or unpredictable change; erratic: He's such a capricious boss I never know how he'll react.
- carbon process — a photographic process for producing positive prints by exposing sensitized carbon tissue to light passing through a negative. Washing removes the unexposed gelatine leaving the pigmented image in the exposed insoluble gelatine
- carbro process — a process for making carbon or pigment prints on bromide paper without exposure to light.
- castrop-rauxel — an industrial city in W Germany, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Pop: 78 208 (2003 est)
- catastrophical — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
- catastrophized — Simple past tense and past participle of catastrophize.
- cavalier poets — a group of mid-17th-century English lyric poets, mostly courtiers of Charles I. Chief among them were Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace