17-letter words containing r, l, a, b
- 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)
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- dicarboxylic acid — any carboxylic acid that contains two carboxyl groups per molecule
- differentiability — The ability to be differentiated.
- digital dashboard — (software) A personalised desktop portal that focuses on business intelligence and knowledge management.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- dishonourableness — Alternative spelling of dishonorableness.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- division of labor — a production process in which a worker or group of workers is assigned a specialized task in order to increase efficiency.
- double pair royal — a set of four cards of the same denomination, worth 12 points.
- double quatrefoil — a charge having the form of a foil with eight leaves, used especially as the cadency mark of a ninth son.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- douglas engelbart — (person) Douglas C. Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse. On 1968-12-09, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, USA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the on live system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking and shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. The original 90-minute video: Hyperlinks, Mouse, Web-board.
- downward mobility — movement from one social level to a higher one (upward mobility) or a lower one (downward mobility) as by changing jobs or marrying.
- downwardly mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- downwardly-mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- drive-by download — an incidence of an unwanted program being automatically downloaded to a computer, often without the user's knowledge
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- english breakfast — An English breakfast is a breakfast consisting of cooked food such as bacon, eggs, sausages, and tomatoes. It also includes toast and tea or coffee.
- false bread-fruit — ceriman.
- federal land bank — a U.S. federal bank for making long-term loans to farmers.
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- flowering tobacco — any plant belonging to the genus Nicotiana, of the nightshade family, as N. alata and N. sylvestris, having clusters of fragrant flowers that usually bloom at night, grown as an ornamental.
- fluid lubrication — lubrication in which bearing surfaces are separated by an oil film sustained by the motion of the parts
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- four-rowed barley — a class of barley having, in each spike, six rows of grain, with two pairs of rows overlapping.
- frostbite sailing — the sport of sailing in temperate latitudes during the winter despite cold weather.
- gamblers' fallacy — the fallacy that in a series of chance events the probability of one event occurring increases with the number of times another event has occurred in succession
- garbage collector — refuse collector, dustman
- glastonbury chair — a folding chair having legs crossed front-to-back and having arms connected to the back and to the front seat rail.
- goldbeater's skin — the prepared outside membrane of the large intestine of the ox, used by goldbeaters to lay between the leaves of the metal while they beat it into gold leaf.
- golf ball printer — IBM 2741
- great willow herb — either of two tall, large-flowered willow herbs, Epilobium angustifolium or E. hirsutum.
- greenland halibut — a flatfish, Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, similar and related to the halibut
- haemoglobinometer — an instrument used to determine the haemoglobin content of blood
- 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.
- hard-shelled crab — a crab, esp. an edible sea crab, before it has shed its hard shell
- harvey wallbanger — a screwdriver cocktail topped with Galliano.
- headline-grabbing — A headline-grabbing statement or activity is one that is intended to attract a lot of attention, especially from the media.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- high-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent carbon
- histamine blocker — any of various substances that act at a specific receptor site to block certain actions of histamine.
- hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
- hold sb to ransom — If you say that someone is holding you to ransom in British English, or holding you for ransom in American English, you mean that they are using their power to try to force you to do something which you do not want to do.
- honorable mention — a citation conferred on a contestant, exhibit, etc., having exceptional merit though not winning a top honor or prize.