17-letter words containing t, h, r
- biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
- birth certificate — Your birth certificate is an official document which gives details of your birth, such as the date and place of your birth, and the names of your parents.
- birth of a nation — an American film (1915), directed by D. W. Griffith.
- blackcurrant bush — a bush of the blackcurrant plant
- blood and thunder — A blood and thunder performer or performance is very loud and emotional.
- blood cholesterol — a measurement of the amount of cholesterol in someone's blood
- blood-and-thunder — sensationalism, violence, or exaggerated melodrama: a movie full of blood and thunder.
- boat-billed heron — a nocturnal, tropical American wading bird (Cochlearius cochlearius) with a large, broad bill: it is the only member of a family (Cochleariidae) of wading birds
- boatswain's chair — a seat consisting of a short flat board slung from ropes, used to support a person working on the side of a vessel or in its rigging
- bohemian brethren — a Protestant Christian sect formed in the 15th century from various Hussite groups, which rejected oaths and military service and advocated a pure and disciplined spiritual life. It was reorganized in 1722 as the Moravian Church
- bottlebrush grass — a North American grass, Hystrix patula, having loose flower spikes with long awns.
- branch delay slot — delayed control-transfer
- branch prediction — (processor, algorithm) A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.
- brazilian rhatany — See under rhatany (def 1).
- break one's heart — to grieve or cause to grieve very deeply, esp through love
- break the back of — to complete the greatest or hardest part of (a task)
- breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
- brezhnev doctrine — the doctrine expounded by Leonid Brezhnev in November 1968 affirming the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the affairs of Communist countries to strengthen Communism.
- brightening agent — a compound applied to a textile to increase its brightness by the conversion of ultraviolet radiation to visible (blue) light, used in detergents
- brighton and hove — a city and unitary authority in S England, in East Sussex. Pop: 251 500 (2003 est). Area: 72 sq km (28 sq miles)
- bring up the rear — to be at the back in a procession, race, etc
- british cameroons — a former British trust territory of West Africa
- british columbian — of or relating to British Columbia or its inhabitants
- british israelite — a member of a religious movement claiming that the British people are descended from the lost tribes of Israel
- british shorthair — a breed of large cat with a short dense coat
- british-cameroons — German Kamerun. a region in W Africa: a German protectorate 1884–1919; divided in 1919 into British and French mandates.
- broadview heights — a town in N Ohio.
- broken white line — a regular, discontinuous white line on a roadway, indicating that overtaking is permitted
- buncher resonator — See under Klystron.
- bursting strength — the capacity of a thing or substance to resist change when under pressure.
- bury the tomahawk — to stop fighting; make peace
- caa the feet frae — to send (a person) sprawling
- called to the bar — admitted to the practice of law as a barrister
- can't be bothered — If you say that you can't be bothered to do something, you mean that you are not going to do it because you think it is unnecessary or because you are too lazy.
- cape horn current — the part of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flowing E at Cape Horn.
- carry a torch for — If you say that someone is carrying a torch for someone else, you mean that they secretly admire them or love them.
- cartoon character — one of the people or animals in an animated film
- 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.
- castle in the air — a hope or desire unlikely to be realized; daydream
- cat scratch fever — a disorder characterized by fever and swelling of the lymph glands, caused by a viral infection resulting from the scratch or bite of a cat.
- cat-scratch fever — a disease of humans caused by an organism, Bartonella henselae, usually resulting from a scratch by a cat and characterized by lymph node enlargement
- catastrophization — The act or process of catastrophizing.
- catcher resonator — See under Klystron.
- cathedral ceiling — a high ceiling formed by or suggesting an open-timbered roof.
- celestial horizon — the line or circle that forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky.
- certified teacher — a teacher who has the required credentials to teach in a particular place
- chamber orchestra — A chamber orchestra is a small orchestra which plays classical music.
- chapter and verse — If you say that someone gives you chapter and verse on a particular subject, you are emphasizing that they tell you every detail about it.
- character actress — an actress who specializes in playing odd or eccentric characters
- character defense — a personality trait, as a habitual tendency to idealize or rationalize, that serves some unconscious defensive purpose.