17-letter words containing r, e, t, u
- bureaucratization — to divide an administrative agency or office into bureaus.
- bursting strength — the capacity of a thing or substance to resist change when under pressure.
- burton-upon-trent — a town in W central England, in E Staffordshire: famous for brewing. Pop: 43 784 (2001)
- bury the tomahawk — to stop fighting; make peace
- butterfly bandage — a butterfly-shaped strip of adhesive medical tape used, when stitches are not required, to keep a deep cut or incision tightly closed while it heals
- butterfly closure — an adhesive bandage resembling the shape of a butterfly's outstretched wings, used for closing minor cuts.
- butterfly diagram — a graphical butterfly-shaped representation of the sunspot density on the solar disc in the 11-year sunspot cycle
- butternut pumpkin — a variety of pumpkin, eaten as vegetable
- buyers' inflation — inflation in which rising demand results in a rise in prices.
- by return of post — by the next mail in the opposite direction
- cabbage butterfly — a common white butterfly (Pieris rapae) whose green larvae feed upon cabbage and related plants
- calcium carbonate — a white crystalline salt occurring in limestone, chalk, marble, calcite, coral, and pearl: used in the production of lime and cement. Formula: CaCO3
- california nutmeg — a tall, pungently aromatic California evergreen tree, Torreya californica, of the yew family, having a fissured, gray-brown bark and small, purple-streaked, green fruit.
- camberwell beauty — a nymphalid butterfly, Nymphalis antiopa, of temperate regions, having dark purple wings with cream-yellow borders
- campus university — a university in which the buildings, often including shops and cafés, are all on one site
- cape horn current — the part of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flowing E at Cape Horn.
- capital structure — the way that a company finances its assets through a combination of equity, debt etc
- caribbean current — an ocean current flowing westward through the Caribbean Sea.
- carlos de austria — Don [dawn] /dɔn/ (Show IPA), 1545–68, eldest son of Philip II of Spain: died during imprisonment for conspiracy against his father.
- cartesian product — the set of all ordered pairs of members of two given sets. The product A × B is the set of all pairs <a, b> where a is a member of A and b is a member of B
- cast/run your eye — If you cast your eye or run your eye over something, you look at it or read it quickly.
- casting the runes — (jargon) What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program because it never works for anyone else; especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight.
- celestial equator — the great circle lying on the celestial sphere, the plane of which is perpendicular to the line joining the north and south celestial poles
- cellular automata — cellular automaton
- cellulose nitrate — a compound made by treating cellulose with nitric and sulphuric acids, used in plastics, lacquers, and explosives: a nitrogen-containing ester of cellulose
- centrifugal brake — a safety mechanism on a hoist, crane, etc, that consists of revolving brake shoes that are driven outwards by centrifugal force into contact with a fixed brake drum when the rope drum revolves at excessive speed
- centrifugal force — In physics, centrifugal force is the force that makes objects move outwards when they are spinning around something or travelling in a curve.
- chateau cardboard — wine sold in a winebox
- chemotherapeutics — chemotherapy.
- chest measurement — the circumference of the trunk, measured around the middle of the chest
- chicken drumstick — a chicken leg, considered as food
- chiltern hundreds — (in Britain) short for Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds; a nominal office that an MP applies for in order to resign his seat
- chinese turkestan — the E part of the central Asian region of Turkestan: corresponds generally to the present-day Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China
- churchyard beetle — a blackish nocturnal ground beetle, Blaps mucronata, found in cellars and similar places
- circular triangle — a triangle in which each side is the arc of a circle
- circular velocity — the velocity at which a body must move in order to maintain an orbit at the outer edge of the earth's atmosphere.
- circumscriptively — In a circumscriptive manner.
- circumterrestrial — surrounding or revolving about the earth.
- clairaut equation — a differential equation of the form y = xy prime; + f (y prime;).
- clare boothe luce — Clare Boothe, 1903–87, U.S. writer, politician, and diplomat.
- coastguard vessel — a ship used by the coastguard
- coitus reservatus — the deliberate delaying or avoidance of orgasm during intercourse
- coldstream guards — a guard regiment of the English royal household: formed in Coldstream, Scotland, 1659–60, and instrumental in restoring the English monarchy under Charles II.
- collegiate church — a church that has an endowed chapter of canons and prebendaries attached to it but that is not a cathedral
- color temperature — a temperature defined in terms of the temperature of a black body at which it emits light of a specified spectral distribution: used to specify the color of a light source.
- colour separation — the division of a coloured original into cyan, magenta, yellow, and black so that plates may be made for print reproduction. Separation may be achieved by electronic scanning or by photographic techniques using filters to isolate each colour
- colour supplement — A colour supplement is a colour magazine which is one of the sections of a newspaper, especially at weekends.
- colour television — television that broadcasts in real-life colours, as opposed to black and white
- community service — Community service is unpaid work that criminals sometimes do as a punishment instead of being sent to prison.
- commuter airplane — air taxi.