18-letter words containing s, g, r
- bring to its knees — If a country or organization is brought to its knees, it is almost completely destroyed by someone or something.
- bring-and-buy sale — A bring-and-buy sale is an informal sale to raise money for a charity or other organization. People who come to the sale bring things to be sold and buy things that other people have brought.
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- building materials — materials such as bricks, cement, timber, etc
- burn one's bridges — If you burn your bridges, you do something which forces you to continue with a particular course of action, and makes it impossible for you to return to an earlier situation or relationship.
- burn one's fingers — to suffer from having meddled or been rash
- cabernet sauvignon — a black grape originally grown in the Bordeaux area of France, and now throughout the wine-producing world
- can't get arrested — (of a performer) is unrecognized and unsuccessful
- cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
- catalogue raisonne — a descriptive catalogue, esp one covering works of art in an exhibition or collection
- cauliflower fungus — a large edible white to yellowish cauliflowerlike mushroom, Sparassis radicata, widely distributed in North America.
- celestial marriage — the rite or state of marriage, performed in a Mormon temple by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believed to continue beyond death.
- cervical screening — a screening for cervical cancer
- 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
- character graphics — ASCII art
- charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
- chattering classes — The chattering classes are people such as journalists, broadcasters, or public figures who comment on events but have little or no influence over them.
- chinese gooseberry — kiwi (sense 2)
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- christmas stocking — A Christmas stocking is a long sock which children hang up on Christmas Eve. During the night, parents fill the stocking with small presents.
- chronostratigraphy — The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.
- cigar-store indian — a wooden statue of an American Indian, traditionally displayed at the entrance of cigar stores.
- coast-guard cutter — a cutter used by the U.S. Coast Guard.
- coastguard station — the headquarters or local offices of a coastguard
- collection charges — the charges levied to cover expenses for the collection of debt
- collision coverage — Collision coverage is insurance cover for vehicle accidents.
- come to grips with — If you come to grips with a problem, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- compressor program — a computer program that compresses data
- concussion grenade — a grenade designed to inflict damage by the force of its detonation rather than by the fragmentation of its casing.
- congregate housing — a type of housing in which each individual or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but shares with other residents a common dining room, recreational room, or other facilities.
- congregationalists — a form of Protestant church government in which each local religious society is independent and self-governing.
- congress of vienna — the European conference held at Vienna from 1814–15 to settle the territorial problems left by the Napoleonic Wars
- connected subgraph — (mathematics) A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
- consecrated ground — ground that has been made or declared sacred or holy, and is therefore suitable for Christian burial
- conservation grade — relating to food produced using traditional methods where possible, and following strict specifications regarding animal feeds and welfare, the use of chemical fertilizers, wildlife conservation, and land management
- corps of engineers — a branch of the U.S. Army responsible for military and many civil engineering projects.
- counseling service — an advice service
- counter-aggression — the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression.
- countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
- creeping featurism — (jargon) /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
- creeping paralysis — any slow process that causes a system, government, etc, to stop working efficiently
- crested dog's-tail — a common wiry perennial grass, Cynosurus cristatus, of meadows and pasture
- crested wheatgrass — a forage grass, Agropyron cristatum, native to Eurasia and grown in the Great Plains as pasturage, hay, and for erosion control.
- cultural sociology — the study of the origins and development of societal institutions, norms, and practices.
- cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
- cushing's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by obesity, hypertension, excessive hair growth, etc., caused by an overactive adrenal gland or large doses of corticosteroids
- dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
- dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
- dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
- debt restructuring — Debt restructuring is a method of organizing a company's debts in a different way in order to make the company more likely to be able to pay them.