18-letter words containing t, a, l, r
- basket-handle arch — an arch having a symmetrical form drawn from an odd number of radii in excess of one, which increase in length from the springing toward the center.
- bats-in-the-belfry — a hairy Eurasian campanulaceous plant, Campanula trachelium, with bell-shaped blue-purple flowers
- battery eliminator — eliminator (def 2).
- battery-eliminator — a person or thing that eliminates.
- battle of clontarf — a battle fought in 1014, near Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland, in which the Danes were defeated by the Irish but the Irish king, Brian Boru, was killed
- battle of omdurman — a battle (1898) in which the Mahdi's successor and his Ansar followers were defeated by Lord Kitchener's British forces
- battleground-state — a state of the U.S. in which the Democratic and Republican candidates both have a good chance of winning and that is considered key to the outcome of a presidential election: the swing states of Ohio and Indiana.
- bel and the dragon — a book of the Apocrypha that is included as chapter 14 of Daniel in the Douay Bible.
- bernoulli equation — Hydrodynamics. Bernoulli's theorem (def 2).
- best-ball foursome — a match, scored by holes, between two pairs of players, in which the score of the lower scoring member of each pair is taken as their score for the hole.
- bilateral symmetry — the property of an organism or part of an organism such that, if cut in only one plane, the two cut halves are mirror images of each other
- biological control — the control of destructive organisms by the use of other organisms, such as the natural predators of the pests
- biological parents — the biological mother and father of a child
- biological therapy — biotherapy
- bipolar transistor — (electronics) A transistor made from a sandwich of n- and p-type semiconductor material: either npn or pnp. The middle section is known as the "base" and the other two as the "collector" and "emitter". When used as an amplifying element, the base to emitter junction is in a "forward-biased" (conducting) condition, and the base to collector junction is "reverse-biased" or non-conducting. Small changes in the base to emitter current (the input signal) cause either holes (for pnp devices) or free electrons (for npn) to enter the base from the emitter. The attracting voltage of the collector causes the majority of these charges to cross into and be collected by the collector, resulting in amplification. Contrast field effect transistor.
- biz-core stability — (security) Internet security products which secure the business core.
- black lives matter — a political and social movement originating among African Americans, emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for black people and campaigning against various forms of racism. Abbreviations: BLM, B.L.M.
- black-necked stork — a large Australian stork, Xenorhyncus asiaticus, having a white plumage, dark green back and tail, and red legs
- blackwater rafting — the sport of riding through underground caves on a large rubber tube
- blocking capacitor — a capacitor that blocks the passage of direct current but allows alternating current to pass
- board of elections — a bipartisan board appointed usually by local authorities and charged with control of elections and voting procedure.
- borosilicate glass — any of a range of heat- and chemical-resistant glasses, such as Pyrex, prepared by fusing together boron(III) oxide, silicon dioxide, and, usually, a metal oxide
- branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
- breast enlargement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
- british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
- broken twill weave — a twill weave in which the direction of the diagonal produced by the weft threads is reversed after no more than two passages of the weft.
- bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.
- building materials — materials such as bricks, cement, timber, etc
- burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
- butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
- butterhead lettuce — a major group of lettuce varieties having soft, pliable leaves and small, loose heads, including bibb and Boston lettuce
- calcium propionate — a white, water-soluble powder, CaC 6 H 10 O 4 , used in bakery products to inhibit the growth of fungi.
- california current — a cold current originating in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, flowing SE along the coast of W North America.
- call to the colors — call or order to serve in the armed forces
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- career development — a progression through a series of jobs, each with more responsibility and a higher income than the last
- carisbrooke castle — a castle near Newport on the Isle of Wight: Charles I was held prisoner here from 1647 until his execution in 1649
- cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
- castration complex — an unconscious fear of having one's genitals removed, as a punishment for wishing to have sex with a parent
- casualty insurance — insurance providing coverage against accident and property damages, as automobile, theft, liability, and explosion insurance, but not including life insurance, fire insurance, or marine insurance.
- catalogue raisonne — a descriptive catalogue, esp one covering works of art in an exhibition or collection
- catalytic cracking — a method used in the petroleum industry for the cracking of petroleum by catalysis
- categorial grammar — a theory that characterizes syntactic categories in terms of functions between classes of expressions. The basic classes are names (N) and sentences (S). Intransitive verbs are symbols for functions which take a name and yield a sentence (written S/N), adverbs form compound verbs from verbs (for example, run fast) and so are (S/N)/(S/N), etc
- caterpillar hunter — any of various carabid beetles of the genus Calosoma, of Europe and North America, which prey on the larvae of moths and butterflies
- ceiling decoration — a plaster moulding for the centre of a ceiling; other decoration, such as coving
- 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.
- cellular automaton — (algorithm, parallel) (CA, plural "- automata") A regular spatial lattice of "cells", each of which can have any one of a finite number of states. The state of all cells in the lattice are updated simultaneously and the state of the entire lattice advances in discrete time steps. The state of each cell in the lattice is updated according to a local rule which may depend on the state of the cell and its neighbors at the previous time step. Each cell in a cellular automaton could be considered to be a finite state machine which takes its neighbours' states as input and outputs its own state. The best known example is J.H. Conway's game of Life.
- cellular telephone — a mobile phone
- central government — the government of a state or country