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20-letter words containing th

  • bigmouth buffalofish — a buffalofish, Ictiobus cyprinellus, found in central North America, characterized by a large mouth.
  • black-throated diver — a diving bird, Gavia arctica, found in Europe and Asia, and a rare summer visitor to the UK
  • blue screen of death — (humour)   (BSOD) The infamous white-on-blue text screen which appears when Microsoft Windows crashes. BSOD is mostly seen on the 16-bit systems such as Windows 3.1, but also on Windows 95 and apparently even under Windows NT 4. It is most likely to be caused by a GPF, although Windows 95 can do it if you've removed a required CD-ROM from the drive. It is often impossible to recover cleanly from a BSOD. The acronym BSOD is sometimes used as a verb, e.g. "Windoze just keeps BSODing on me today".
  • bottom of the barrel — poor quality
  • bowling on the green — lawn bowling.
  • bowling-on-the-green — a game played with wooden balls on a level, closely mowed green having a slight bias, the object being to roll one's ball as near as possible to a smaller white ball at the other end of the green. Also called bowls, bowling on the green. Compare bowl2 (def 2), bowling green, jack1 (def 7), rink (def 5).
  • breadth-first search — (algorithm)   A graph search algorithm which tries all one-step extensions of current paths before trying larger extensions. This requires all current paths to be kept in memory simultaneously, or at least their end points. Opposite of depth-first search. See also best first search.
  • break the glass plan — a plan that is put into operation in an emergency when all other options have been exhausted
  • bring down the house — to receive enthusiastic applause from the audience
  • bring home the bacon — If you bring home the bacon, you achieve what you needed to achieve.
  • bring into the world — (of a midwife, doctor, etc) to deliver (a baby)
  • bring the house down — to win great applause
  • british north borneo — former name of Sabah.
  • british thermal unit — a unit of heat in the fps system equal to the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water by 1°F. 1 British thermal unit is equivalent to 1055.06 joules or 251.997 calories
  • broaden o's/the mind — If an experience broadens your mind, it makes you more willing to accept other people's beliefs and customs.
  • bureau of the census — the division of the Department of Commerce that gathers, tabulates, and correlates census statistics.
  • by their own account — If you say that something concerning a particular person is true by his or her own account, you mean that you believe it because that person has said it is true.
  • can do sth blindfold — If you say that you can do something blindfold, you are emphasizing that you can do it easily, for example because you have done it many times before.
  • carpathian mountains — a mountain system of central and E Europe, extending from Slovakia to central Romania: mainly forested, with rich iron ore resources. Highest peak: Gerlachovka, 2663 m (8788 ft)
  • cast a pall over sth — If something unpleasant casts a pall over an event or occasion, it makes it less enjoyable than it should be.
  • cast the first stone — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
  • catherine de medicis — (Caterina de' Medici) 1518–89, queen of Henry II of France (mother of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III).
  • catherine de' medici — 1519–89, queen of Henry II of France; mother of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III of France; regent of France (1560–74). She was largely responsible for the massacre of Protestants on Saint Bartholomew's Day (1572)
  • centre three-quarter — either of two middle players on the three-quarter line
  • chemolithoautotrophs — Plural form of chemolithoautotroph.
  • chemotherapeutically — By means of chemotherapy.
  • childhood sweetheart — a boyfriend or girlfriend from an early stage of life
  • clean bill of health — a good report of one's physical condition
  • clean-bill-of-health — a certificate, carried by a ship, attesting to the presence or absence of infectious diseases among the ship's crew and at the port from which it has come.
  • clinical thermometer — a finely calibrated thermometer for determining the temperature of the body, usually placed under the tongue, in the armpit, or in the rectum
  • clothes manufacturer — a business concern that manufactures clothes
  • cold-weather payment — (in Britain) a payment made by the government to people on low incomes when the temperature falls below a certain level for a specific number of days
  • colorpoint shorthair — any of a breed of domestic cat, bred by crossing a Siamese and an American shorthair, with blue, almond-shaped eyes and a short, glossy, white coat shading to a darker color at the face, ears, feet, and tail
  • come out in the wash — If you say that something will come out in the wash, you mean that people will eventually find out the truth about it.
  • common yellow throat — a widely distributed wood warbler, Geothlypis trichas, of North America and Mexico, in the male having a black facial mask and yellow underparts.
  • commonwealth hackish — (jargon)   Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like "char" and "soc", etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in newsgroup names (especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix meta may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/, zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred metasyntactic variables include blurgle, "eek", "ook", "frodo", and "bilbo"; "wibble", "wobble", and in emergencies "wubble"; "banana", "tom", "dick", "harry", "wombat", "frog", fish, and so on and on (see foo). Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes "-o-rama", "frenzy" (as in feeding frenzy), and "city" (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American terms "parens", "brackets", and "braces" for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers "brackets", "square brackets", and "curly brackets". Also, the use of "pling" for bang is common outside the United States. See also attoparsec, calculator, chemist, console jockey, fish, go-faster stripes, grunge, hakspek, heavy metal, leaky heap, lord high fixer, loose bytes, muddie, nadger, noddy, psychedelicware, plingnet, raster blaster, RTBM, seggie, spod, sun lounge, terminal junkie, tick-list features, weeble, weasel, YABA, and notes or definitions under Bad Thing, barf, bum, chase pointers, cosmic rays, crippleware, crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nibble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak and xyzzy.
  • commune with oneself — to think; ponder
  • communication theory — information theory.
  • computability theory — (mathematics)   The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer. A function is computable if an algorithm can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input. Since computer programs are countable but real numbers are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them! In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the halting problem, the busy beaver problem is less famous but just as fascinating.
  • continuum hypothesis — the assertion that there is no set whose cardinality is greater than that of the integers and smaller than that of the reals
  • council of the reich — the Reichsrat.
  • council of the union — the legislature of the former Soviet Union and its successor states, consisting of an upper house (Soviet of the Union or Council of the Union) whose delegates are elected on the basis of population, and a lower house (Soviet of Nationalities or Council of Nationalities) whose delegates are elected to represent the various nationalities.
  • craniosacral therapy — a form of therapy for various disorders in which the therapist manipulates the bones of the skull
  • cross someone's path — to meet or thwart someone
  • curry favour with sb — If one person tries to curry favour with another, they do things in order to try to gain their support or co-operation.
  • cut one's own throat — to be the means of one's own ruin
  • cut the gordian knot — to find a quick, bold solution for a perplexing problem
  • death of ivan ilyich — a short novel (1884) by Leo Tolstoy.
  • decahydronaphthalene — a colorless, aromatic liquid, C 10 H 18 , insoluble in water and soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a solvent for oils, fats, etc., in cleaning fluids, lubricants, etc.
  • deduct from the bill — If you deduct an item or expense from the bill at a restaurant or hotel, you take a charge out of a customer's bill.
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