16-letter words containing p, a, r, o
- bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
- 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-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 propaganda — propaganda that does not come from the source it claims to come from
- 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
- blink comparator — an optical instrument used to detect small differences in two photographs of the same field or object by viewing them alternately, switching rapidly from one to the other.
- board of pardons — an agency that determines which prisoners are to be released on parole or discretionary mandatory supervision and recommends pardons
- 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.
- brain aid prolog — (language) (BAP) A parallel Prolog environment for transputer systems by Frank Bergmann <[email protected]>, Martin Ostermann <[email protected]>, and Guido von Walter <[email protected]> of Brain Aid Systems GbR. BAP is based on a model of communicating sequential Prolog processes. The run-time system consists of a multi-process operating system with support for several applications running concurrently.
- 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.
- broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
- bronchopneumonia — inflammation of the lungs, originating in the bronchioles
- brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
- 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.
- burkitt lymphoma — a rare type of tumour of the white blood cells, occurring mainly in Africa and associated with infection by Epstein-Barr virus
- bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- california poppy — a papaveraceous plant, Eschscholtzia californica, of the Pacific coast of North America, having yellow or orange flowers and finely divided bluish-green leaves
- cameo appearance — a single and often brief dramatic scene played by a well-known actor or actress in a film or television play
- campagna di roma — low-lying plain in central Italy, around Rome: c. 800 sq mi (2,072 sq km)
- cantor's paradox — the paradox derived from the supposition of an all-inclusive universal set, since every set has more subsets than members while every subset of such a universal set would be a member of it
- cape cod lighter — a device for lighting a fire, as in a fireplace, consisting of a lump of nonflammable material on a metal rod, that is soaked in kerosene or the like and lighted with a match.
- capillary action — Also called capillary action, capillary attraction. Physics. a manifestation of surface tension by which the portion of the surface of a liquid coming in contact with a solid is elevated or depressed, depending on the adhesive or cohesive properties of the liquid.
- capillary-action — Also called capillary action, capillary attraction. Physics. a manifestation of surface tension by which the portion of the surface of a liquid coming in contact with a solid is elevated or depressed, depending on the adhesive or cohesive properties of the liquid.
- capitation grant — a grant of money given to every person who qualifies under certain conditions
- capsule wardrobe — a collection of clothes and accessories that includes only items considered essential
- carbon footprint — Your carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by your activities over a particular period.
- carbonless paper — a sheet of paper impregnated with dye which transfers writing or typing onto the copying surface below without the necessity for carbon pigment
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
- carnot principle — the principle that no heat engine can be more efficient than one operating on a Carnot cycle of reversible changes
- carpatho-ukraine — a region in W Ukraine: ceded by Czechoslovakia in 1945.
- carpenter gothic — (sometimes initial capital letters) a style of Victorian Gothic architecture adapted to the resources of contemporary woodworking tools and machinery.
- cartographically — the production of maps, including construction of projections, design, compilation, drafting, and reproduction.
- caryophyllaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Caryophyllaceae, a family of flowering plants including the pink, carnation, sweet william, and chickweed
- castor-oil plant — a tall euphorbiaceous Indian plant, Ricinus communis, cultivated in tropical regions for ornament and for its poisonous seeds, from which castor oil is extracted
- catastrophically — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
- category planner — A category planner is a person whose job to plan and co-ordinate future inventory and sales volume in one or more product categories.
- central european — involving or denoting the people, countries, cultures, or languages of Central Europe