14-letter words containing p, r, e, c
- asthenospheric — relating to the asthenosphere
- astrocompasses — Plural form of astrocompass.
- atomic-powered — powered by atomic energy
- bachelor party — A bachelor party is a party for a man who is getting married very soon, to which only men are invited.
- bacteriophages — Plural form of bacteriophage.
- balance spring — hairspring.
- baltimore chop — a batted ball that takes a high bounce upon hitting the ground on or immediately in front of home plate, often enabling the batter to reach first base safely.
- bancroft prize — one of a group of annual awards for literary achievement in American history and biography: administered by Columbia University.
- battery backup — A battery backup is a system in some power supplies that switches between a main power source and a battery.
- benday process — a process for adding tone or shading, as in reproducing drawings, by the overlay on the plate of patterns, as of dots
- beyond compare — If you describe something as beyond compare, you mean that it is extremely good or extremely great.
- biceps brachii — See under biceps.
- biceps femoris — See under biceps.
- binary package — (software) An archive file that contains all files and directories that must be installed in order to make a working installation of the program(s) included in the package, and the maintainer scripts necessary for the installation. A binary package is usually specific to a certain platform, in contrast to a source package.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
- blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- bodice-ripping — A bodice-ripping film or novel is one which is set in the past and which includes a lot of sex scenes. You use this word especially if you do not think it is very good and is just intended to entertain people.
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- bone porcelain — bone china.
- bow and scrape — to behave in an excessively deferential or obsequious way
- brachycephalic — having a head nearly as broad from side to side as from front to back, esp one with a cephalic index over 80
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- bumper sticker — A bumper sticker is a small piece of paper or plastic with words or pictures on it, designed for sticking onto the back of your car. It usually has a political, religious, or humorous message.
- bush carpenter — a rough-and-ready unskilled workman
- 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.
- cabbage looper — the larva of a noctuid moth, Trichoplusia ni, common throughout the U.S. and Canada, that feeds on a wide variety of vegetable crops, especially cabbage and lettuce.
- cafeteria plan — a fringe-benefit plan under which employees may choose from among various benefits those that best fit their needs, up to a specified dollar value.
- call-up papers — a letter containing order to report for service
- caller display — a facility which shows the number of an incoming call
- cambridge lisp — A flavour of Lisp using BCPL. Sources owned by Fitznorman partners.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp counselor — activities supervisor
- camp fire girl — a girl who is a member of Camp Fire, Inc., an organization for girls founded in 1910, and since 1975 also including boys, to promote character-building activities
- camphor laurel — an Australian name for the camphor tree, now occurring in the wild in parts of Australia
- campina grande — a city in NE Brazil, in E Paraíba state. Pop: 366 000 (2005 est)
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- canary creeper — a climbing plant, Tropaeolum peregrinum, similar to the nasturtium but with smaller yellow flowers and lobed leaves
- cancer patient — a person who is receiving medical treatment for a malignant growth or tumour
- cape canaveral — a cape on the E coast of Florida: site of the US Air Force Missile Test Centre, from which the majority of US space missions have been launched
- cape girardeau — a city in SE Missouri, on the Mississippi River.
- cape guardafui — a cape at the NE tip of Somalia, extending into the Indian Ocean
- cape trafalgar — a cape on the SW coast of Spain, south of Cádiz: scene of the decisive naval battle (1805) in which the French and Spanish fleets were defeated by the British under Nelson, who was mortally wounded
- capillary tube — a glass tube with a fine bore and thick walls, used in thermometers, etc
- capital letter — Capital letters are the same as capital s.