18-letter words containing o, u, b, a
- ifs, ands, or buts — a supposition; uncertain possibility: The future is full of ifs.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
- indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
- information bureau — an office where you can go to get information
- informatory double — a double intended to inform one's partner that one has a strong hand and to urge a bid regardless of the strength of his or her hand.
- input/output table — a table of all the inputs and outputs of the industries of an economy
- johannes gutenberg — Johannes [yoh-hahn-uh s] /yoʊˈhɑn əs/ (Show IPA), (Johann Gensfleisch) c1400–68, German printer: credited with invention of printing from movable type.
- last but not least — lastly
- lingual titubation — stuttering or stammering
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- lubber grasshopper — plains grasshopper.
- mordovian republic — a constituent republic of W central Russia, in the middle Volga basin. Capital: Saransk. Pop: 888 700 (2002). Area: 26 200 sq km (10 110 sq miles)
- mountain cranberry — cowberry
- mozambique channel — a channel in SE Africa, between Mozambique and Madagascar. 950 miles (1530 km) long; 250–550 miles (400–885 km) wide.
- multicast backbone — (MBONE) A virtual network on top of the Internet which supports routing of IP multicast packets, intended for multimedia transmission. MBONE gives public access desktop video communications. The quality is poor with only 3-5 frames per second instead of the 30 frames per second of commercial television. Its advantage is that it avoids all telecommunications costs normally associated with teleconferencing. An interesting innovation is the use of MBONE for audio communications and an electronic "whiteboard" where the computer screen becomes a shared workspace where two physically remote parties can draw on and edit shared documents in real-time.
- nebular hypothesis — the theory that the solar system evolved from a mass of nebular matter: prominent in the 19th century following its precise formulation by Laplace.
- non-accountability — the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
- non-understandable — capable of being understood; comprehensible.
- north attleborough — a city in SE Massachusetts.
- objective modula-2 — (language) (Or "ObjM2") An extension to Modula-2 for Cocoa and GNUstep software development. Objective Modula-2 follows the Objective-C object model and retains the bracketed Smalltalk message passing syntax used in Objective-C. Classes written in ObjM2 can be used within ObjC and vice versa. ObjM2 also retains Modula-2's data encapsulation features, namely nested modules with explicit import and export lists. Due to the strict type checking in Modula-2, ObjM2 can be considered a much safer programming language than is ObjC, yet losing none of the capabilities of ObjC.
- oblique-slip fault — a fault on which the movement is along both the strike and the dip of the fault
- on the back burner — low priority
- passive vocabulary — all the words, collectively, that a person can understand
- personal bodyguard — a person employed to protect a particular person
- population balance — A population balance is a model showing particle sizes during a grinding process, which is used when designing a process.
- portable equipment — Portable equipment is electrical equipment that can easily be moved from one place to another while in operation or while connected to the supply.
- provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
- public corporation — a corporation, owned and operated by a government, established for the administration of certain public programs.
- public examination — an examination, such as a GCSE exam, that is set by a central examining board
- publishing company — a firm which publishes books
- pulmonary embolism — the blockage of a pulmonary artery, often by a blood clot, that stops the flow of blood to the lungs and which can result in death if untreated
- put a bold face on — to seem bold or confident about
- put the clock back — to regress
- reversionary bonus — a bonus added to the sum payable on death or at the maturity of a with-profits assurance policy
- rheims-douay bible — Douay Bible.
- saturation bombing — intense area bombing intended to destroy everything in the target area.
- seven-league boots — mythical boots that allowed the wearer to travel seven leagues (a former unit of measurement), ie a great length, at each step
- simone de beauvoir — Simone [see-mawn] /siˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) 1908–86, French playwright, novelist, and essayist.
- sodium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble solid, in powder or granules, NaHCO 3 , usually prepared by the reaction of soda ash with carbon dioxide or obtained from the intermediate product of the Solvay process by purification: used chiefly in the manufacture of sodium salts, baking powder, and beverages, as a laboratory reagent, as a fire extinguisher, and in medicine as an antacid.
- sodium tetraborate — borax1 .
- southeast by south — a point on the compass 11°15′ south of southeast. Abbreviation: SEbS.
- stroustrup, bjarne — Bjarne Stroustrup
- sub-classification — to arrange in subclasses.
- subatomic particle — physics:
- subordinate clause — a clause that modifies the principal clause or some part of it or that serves a noun function in the principal clause, as when she arrived in the sentence I was there when she arrived or that she has arrived in the sentence I doubt that she has arrived.
- subsidiary company — a company whose controlling interest is owned by another company.
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- take a bite out of — If something takes a bite out of a sum of money, part of the money is spent or taken away in order to pay for it.
- the black mountain — a mountain range in S Wales, in E Carmarthenshire and W Powys. Highest peak: Carmarthen Van, 802 m (2632 ft)