17-letter words containing p, r, b
- carbon disulphide — a colourless slightly soluble volatile flammable poisonous liquid commonly having a disagreeable odour due to the presence of impurities: used as an organic solvent and in the manufacture of rayon and carbon tetrachloride. Formula: CS2
- carbon microphone — a microphone in which a diaphragm, vibrated by sound waves, applies a varying pressure to a container packed with carbon granules, altering the resistance of the carbon. A current flowing through the carbon is thus modulated at the frequency of the sound waves
- class-b amplifier — an electronic amplifier in which the output flows for half of the input signal cycle
- club subscription — an amount of money that someone pays regularly in order to belong to a club
- clumber (spaniel) — a short-legged spaniel with a heavy body and a thick coat of straight, white hair marked with yellow or orange
- comprehensibility — capable of being comprehended or understood; intelligible.
- cypriot syllabary — a syllabic script in use on Cyprus in the first millennium b.c., used for the writing of Greek and of an unknown language.
- cyrillic alphabet — the alphabet derived from that of the Greeks, supposedly by Saint Cyril, for the writing of Slavonic languages: now used primarily for Russian, Bulgarian, and the Serbian dialect of Serbo-Croat
- cytotrophoblastic — Relating to, or containing, cytotrophoblasts.
- dagestan republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the Caspian Sea: annexed from Persia in 1813; rich mineral resources. Capital: Makhachkala. Pop: 2 584 200 (2002). Area: 50 278 sq km (19 416 sq miles)
- debrett's peerage — a list of the British aristocracy
- desktop publisher — desktop publishing
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- doberman pinscher — one of a German breed of medium-sized, short-haired dogs having a black, brown, or blue coat with rusty brown markings.
- double pair royal — a set of four cards of the same denomination, worth 12 points.
- drop one's bundle — several objects or a quantity of material gathered or bound together: a bundle of hay.
- egyptian brackets — (programming, humour) A humourous term for K&R indent style, referring to the "one hand up in front, one down behind" pose which popular culture inexplicably associates with Egypt.
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flexible response — a military strategy that enables the response to an attack to be adapted to the nature and strength of the attack
- golf ball printer — IBM 2741
- half-breadth plan — a diagrammatic plan of one half of the hull of a vessel divided lengthwise amidships, showing water lines, stations, diagonals, and bow and buttock lines.
- hepatitis b virus — a form of hepatitis caused by a DNA virus (hepatitis B virus, or HBV) that persists in the blood, characterized by a long incubation period: usually transmitted by sexual contact or by injection or ingestion of infected blood or other bodily fluids.
- humpbacked bridge — A humpbacked bridge or humpback bridge is a short and very curved bridge with a shape similar to a semi-circle.
- hyperbolic cosine — one of a group of functions of an angle expressed as a relationship between the distances of a point on a hyperbola to the origin and to the coordinate axes; cosh
- hyperbolic secant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of cosh; sech
- hyperbolic spiral — rθ = a, (where a is a constant)
- hyperexcitability — an excessive reaction to stimuli.
- hyperirritability — extreme irritability.
- i beg your pardon — You say 'Pardon?' or 'I beg your pardon?' or, in American English, 'Pardon me?' when you want someone to repeat what they have just said because you have not heard or understood it.
- iambic pentameter — a verse line consisting of five metrical iambs
- iberian peninsula — Also called Iberian Peninsula. a peninsula in SW Europe, comprising Spain and Portugal.
- impossible figure — a picture of an object that at first sight looks three-dimensional but cannot be a two-dimensional projection of a real three-dimensional object, for example a picture of a staircase that re-enters itself while appearing to ascend continuously
- impracticableness — The state of being impracticable; impracticability.
- impressionability — easily impressed or influenced; susceptible: an impressionable youngster.
- incompressibility — The quality of being incompressible, of not compressing under pressure.
- incubation period — the period between infection and the appearance of signs of a disease.
- indecipherability — Quality of being indecipherable.
- indian paintbrush — any of several semiparasitic plants belonging to the genus Castilleja, of the figwort family, as C. linariaefolia, of the western U.S.: the state flower of Wyoming.
- insupportableness — The state of being insupportable; insufferableness.
- invisible exports — services sold to a foreign country or countries
- invisible imports — imports of services rather than goods
- irreproducibility — The quality of not being reproducible.
- japanese barberry — a thorny barberry, Berberis thunbergii, of Japan, having yellow flowers and bearing bright-red fruit, grown as a hedge plant.
- jump trace buffer — (JTB) A feature of some pipelined processors (e.g. Amulet, Pentium?) which stores the source and destination addresses of the last few branch instuctions executed. When a branch instruction is fetched, its source is looked for in the JTB. If found, the next instuction fetch will be from the previous destination of that branch. If it turns out that the branch shouldn't have been taken this time, then the pipeline is flushed. This means that in a tight loop it is not necessary to flush the pipeline every time you jump back to the start.
- karelian republic — a constituent republic of NW Russia between the White Sea and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Capital: Petrozavodsk. Pop: 716 700 (2002). Area: 172 400 sq km (66 560 sq miles)
- keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
- lambda expression — (mathematics) A term in the lambda-calculus denoting an unnamed function (a "lambda abstraction"), a variable or a constant. The pure lambda-calculus has only functions and no constants.
- least upper bound — an upper bound that is less than or equal to all the upper bounds of a particular set. 3 is the least upper bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbr.: lub.
- liberty of speech — freedom of speech.
- ligurian republic — the republic in NW Italy set up by Napoleon in 1797, incorporated into France in 1805, and united with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.