18-letter words containing r, h, o, e
- be getting nowhere — If you say that you are getting nowhere, or getting nowhere fast, or that something is getting you nowhere, you mean that you are not achieving anything or having any success.
- beefsteak mushroom — an edible bracket fungus, Fistulina hepatica, that grows on trees and can rot the heartwood of living oaks and chestnuts.
- before the present — See B.P (def 4).
- beggar-my-neighbor — beggar-your-neighbor.
- behavioral science — any of several studies, as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., that examine human activities in an attempt to discover recurrent patterns and to formulate rules about social behavior
- behaviour patterns — the characteristic ways in which a person or animal acts
- bel and the dragon — a book of the Apocrypha that is included as chapter 14 of Daniel in the Douay Bible.
- benchmark position — a public service job used for comparison with a similar position, such as a position in commerce, for wage settlements
- bernard of menthon — Saint(11th cent.); Fr. monk who founded hospices in the Swiss Alps: his day is May 28
- bichromate process — any of several methods of photography in which the light-sensitive medium is alkaline bichromate associated with a colloid such as gum, albumen, or gelatin.
- biological therapy — biotherapy
- bird's-nest orchid — a brown parasitic Eurasian orchid, Neottia nidus-avis, whose thick fleshy roots resemble a bird's nest and contain a fungus on which the orchid feeds
- birds of a feather — If you refer to two people as birds of a feather, you mean that they have the same interests or are very similar.
- bolt from the blue — If a piece of news comes like a bolt from the blue, it is completely unexpected and very surprising.
- borax pentahydrate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble solid, Na 2 B 4 O 7 ⋅5H 2 O, used chiefly for killing weeds, as a water softener, and as a disinfectant and deodorizing agent.
- bore the pants off — to bore extremely
- born to the purple — being of royal or high birth
- bosnia-herzegovina — a country in SE Europe; a constituent republic of Yugoslavia until 1991; in a state of civil war (1992–95); Serbian and Croatian forces were also involved: mostly barren and mountainous, with forests in the east. Languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (formerly all regarded together as Serbo-Croat). Religion: Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic. Currency: marka (pegged to the euro). Capital: Sarajevo. Pop: 3 875 723 (2013 est). Area: 51 129 sq km (19 737 sq miles)
- breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
- breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
- breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
- brightness control — a control that enables the brightness of the image on a television screen, computer monitor, etc to be adjusted
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.
- brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.
- bullnose stretcher — bull stretcher (def 1).
- bullnose-stretcher — Also called bullnose stretcher. a brick having one of the edges along its length rounded for laying as a stretcher in a sill or the like.
- call to the colors — call or order to serve in the armed forces
- carbonic anhydrase — an enzyme in blood cells that catalyses the decomposition of carbonic acid into carbon dioxide and water, facilitating the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs
- carbonic-anhydride — carbon dioxide.
- carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
- carolina chickadee — a chickadee, Parus carolinensis, of the southeastern U.S., resembling but smaller than the black-capped chickadee.
- carpenterworm moth — any moth of the family Cossidae, as Prionoxystus robiniae of the U.S. and southern Canada, whose larvae bore into the trunks and branches of oaks, locusts, and other trees.
- cash-for-questions — of, involved in, or relating to a scandal in which some MPs were accused of accepting bribes to ask particular questions in Parliament
- cassiopeia's chair — the five brightest stars in the constellation Cassiopeia that seem to form the shape of a W or M
- catastrophe theory — a mathematical theory that classifies surfaces according to their form
- catch one's breath — When you catch your breath while you are doing something energetic, you stop for a short time so that you can start breathing normally again.
- catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
- cathode dark space — Crookes dark space.
- cauliflower cheese — a dish of cauliflower with a cheese sauce, eaten hot
- cellular telephone — a mobile phone
- centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
- chagos archipelago — group of islands in the Indian Ocean 1,180 mi (1,899 km) northeast of Mauritius, comprising the British Indian Ocean Territory: chief island, Diego Garcia
- chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
- character disorder — a disorder characterized by socially undesirable behavior, as poor control of impulses or inability to maintain close emotional relationships, and by absence of anxiety or guilt.
- character encoding — (character) (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping between binary data values and character code positions (or "code points"). Early systems stored characters in a variety of ways, e.g. four six-bit characters in a 24-bit word, but around 1960, eight-bit bytes started to become the most common data storage layout, with each character stored in one byte, typically in the ASCII character set. In the case of ASCII, the character encoding is an identity mapping: code position 65 maps to the byte value 65. This is possible because ASCII uses only code positions representable as single bytes, i.e., values between 0 and 255. (US-ASCII only uses values 0 to 127, in fact.) From the late 1990s, there was increased use of larger character sets such as Unicode and many CJK coded character sets. These can represent characters from many languages and more symbols.
- charge conjugation — the mathematical operation of replacing every elementary particle by its antiparticle. Symbol: C.
- charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
- chartered surveyor — (in Britain) a surveyor who is registered with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as having the qualifications, training, and experience to satisfy their professional requirements
- check verification — Check verification is a system that checks national databases of information about individuals to make sure that checks will be honored and fraud is not being committed.