16-letter words containing r, a, k
- boreal chickadee — a brown-capped, black-throated chickadee (Parus hudsonicus) found near the Atlantic coast from Labrador to N New York
- bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
- bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
- brake horsepower — the rate at which an engine does work, expressed in horsepower. It is measured by the resistance of an applied brake
- braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
- break faith with — If you break faith with someone you made a promise to or something you believed in, you stop acting in a way that supports them.
- break new ground — to do something that has not been done before
- break one's back — to overwork or work very hard
- break one's fast — to eat food for the first time after fasting, or for the first time in the day
- break one's neck — to exert oneself greatly, esp by hurrying, in order to do something
- break one's word — to fail to keep one's promise
- break sb's heart — If something breaks your heart, it makes you feel very sad and depressed, especially because people are suffering but you can do nothing to help them.
- break the record — surpass previous highest, best
- 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.
- breakfast cereal — a type of food made from a cereal plant and commonly eaten at breakfast
- brick-and-mortar — pertaining to conventional stores, businesses, etc., having physical buildings and facilities, as opposed to Internet or remote services.
- buckthorn family — the plant family Rhamnaceae, characterized by shrubs and trees having alternate, simple leaves, clusters of small flowers, and fruit in the form of a drupe or capsule, and including the buckthorn, cascara, and New Jersey tea.
- bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
- burkitt lymphoma — a rare type of tumour of the white blood cells, occurring mainly in Africa and associated with infection by Epstein-Barr virus
- button snakeroot — blazing star (sense 1)
- calculate a risk — If you calculate a risk, you decide how likely an event is, whether the insurer should underwrite the risk, and at what cost.
- cantankerousness — disagreeable to deal with; contentious; peevish: a cantankerous, argumentative man.
- carnal knowledge — Chiefly Law. sexual intercourse.
- carpatho-ukraine — a region in W Ukraine: ceded by Czechoslovakia in 1945.
- carrot and stick — If an organization has a carrot and stick approach or policy, they offer people things in order to persuade them to do something and punish them if they refuse to do it.
- cassia-bark tree — a lauraceous tree, Cinnamomum cassia, of eastern Asia.
- category mistake — a sentence that says of something in one category what can only intelligibly be said of something in another, as when speaking of the mind located in space
- character sketch — a brief description or portrayal of a person's character, qualities, etc
- chernobyl packet — (networking) /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, named in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ethernet address and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet.
- chiclet keyboard — (hardware, abuse) A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of Chiclets chewing gum. Used especially to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop computers were launched with them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
- childcare worker — someone who takes care of children in return for money
- clackmannanshire — a council area and historical county of central Scotland; became part of the Central region in 1975 but reinstated as an independent unitary authority in 1996; mainly agricultural. Administrative centre: Alloa. Pop: 47 680 (2003 est). Area: 142 sq km (55 sq miles)
- clarke's gazelle — dibatag.
- class background — a person's background with reference to social class
- cloak-and-dagger — A cloak-and-dagger activity is one which involves mystery and secrecy.
- cloak-and-suiter — a manufacturer or seller of clothing.
- cloakroom ticket — a ticket given to someone who checks a coat or other personal item into a cloakroom and which is used to redeem that item at a later period
- commercial break — A commercial break is the interval during a commercial television programme, or between programmes, during which advertisements are shown.
- contract killing — a murder carried out in fulfilment of a contract
- control freakery — an obsessive need to be in control of what is happening
- cooperative bank — a cooperative savings institution, chartered and regulated by a state or the federal government, that receives deposits in exchange for shares of ownership and invests its funds chiefly in loans secured by first mortgages on homes.
- cornhusker state — Nebraska (used as a nickname).
- counterattacking — Present participle of counterattack.
- cracked fraction — A cracked fraction is a petroleum fraction (= a portion separated according to a physical property) that has been broken down from a fraction with larger molecules.
- cracked up to be — alleged or believed to be
- cracker capacity — The cracker capacity is the amount of a particular product which a refinery can produce.
- dakota territory — a territory in the N central U.S., from 1861 to 1868 comprising present-day North Dakota and South Dakota, and parts of Montana and Wyoming.
- dark of the moon — the period during which the moon is not visible.
- dark-side hacker — (jargon, legal) A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Opposite: samurai.
- day of reckoning — If someone talks about the day of reckoning, they mean a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now.