17-letter words containing a, d, i
- audience research — research into the make-up and habits of the audience of a particular television or radio programme or network
- audio description — a facility provided for visually impaired people in which a film, television programme, or play is described through audio technology
- audio-visual aids — training or educational materials directed at both the sense of hearing and the sense of sight; films, recordings, photographs, etc., used in classroom instruction, library collections, or the like.
- augmented reality — an artificial environment created through the combination of real-world and computer-generated data
- aurea mediocritas — the golden mean.
- automated testing — (testing) Software testing assisted with software tools that require no operator input, analysis, or evaluation.
- automatic vending — selling goods by vending machines
- average deviation — a measure of dispersion, computed by taking the arithmetic mean of the absolute values of the deviations of the functional values from some central value, usually the mean or median.
- aviation industry — a collective term for the companies involved in air transport
- aviation medicine — the branch of medicine concerned with the effects on man of flight in the earth's atmosphere
- avoirdupois pound — a pound weighing 16 ounces
- axis of ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- axis-of-ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- babe in the woods — a baby or child.
- baby doll nightie — a short, frilly nightdress
- backward analysis — (theory) An analysis to determine properties of the inputs of a program from properties or context of the outputs. E.g. if the output of this function is needed then this argument is needed. Compare forward analysis.
- backward chaining — (algorithm) An algorithm for proving a goal by recursively breaking it down into sub-goals and trying to prove these until facts are reached. Facts are goals with no sub-goals which are therefore always true. Backward training is the program execution mechanism used by most logic programming language like Prolog. Opposite: forward chaining.
- bacteriorhodopsin — a purple protein containing retinal and found in the plasma membrane of certain bacteria (genus Halobacterium): it directly supplies electrochemical energy from sunlight
- bahia de cochinos — Spanish name of Bay of Pigs.
- balanced literacy — a method of teaching reading in which phonics and whole language approaches are both used to maximize student learning.
- bar-tailed godwit — a large wader, Limosa lapponica, of the family Scolopacidae which, in migrating from Alaska to New Zealand, makes the longest journey without stopping for food taken by any animal
- barbed wire fence — a fence constructed from strong wire that has sharply pointed barbs at close intervals along its length
- barbed-wire grass — an aromatic grass, Cymbopogon refractus, with groups of seed heads resembling barbed wire
- bari delle puglie — Italian name of Bari.
- barmecide (feast) — a pretended feast with no food
- barrel distortion — distortion of an image produced by an optical system that causes straight lines at image margins to bulge outwards
- bartholin's gland — either of two small glands near the vaginal opening: during sexual excitement they secrete a mucous lubricating substance
- base lending rate — a minimum interest rate on which financial institutions base the rates they use for lending
- baseboard heating — a heating system by pipes, through which steam or hot water circulates, near the base of the walls of rooms
- be a box of birds — to be very well indeed
- be running scared — If you say that a person or group is running scared, you mean that they are frightened of what someone might do to them or what might happen.
- beardmore glacier — one of the largest glaciers, in central Antarctica. About 125 miles (200 km) long.
- beer and skittles — enjoyment or pleasure
- behind one's back — without one's knowledge; secretly or deceitfully
- benoit mandelbrot — (person) /ben'wa man'dl-bro/ Benoit B. Mandelbrot. The IBM scientist who wrote several original books on fractals and gave his name to the set he was discovered, the Mandelbrot set and coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break".
- bergisch gladbach — city in W Germany, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia: pop. 105,000
- bergisch-gladbach — an industrial city in W Germany, near Cologne.
- betagalactosidase — any of a family of enzymes capable of liberating galactose from carbohydrates.
- beyond comparison — outstanding, without equal
- bill of adventure — a certificate made out by a merchant to show that goods handled by him and his agents are the property of another party at whose risk the dealing is done
- bill of attainder — (formerly) a legislative act finding a person guilty without trial of treason or felony and declaring him attainted
- biological shield — a protective shield impervious to radiation, esp the thick concrete wall surrounding the core of a nuclear reactor
- bitmapped display — bitmap display
- bitter almond oil — almond oil (def 2).
- bitter-almond-oil — Also called sweet almond oil, expressed almond oil. a colorless to pale yellow fatty oil expressed from the seeds of the sweet almond, used in preparing perfumes and confections.
- black-tailed deer — a variety of mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, having a tail that is black above.
- blackwells island — a former name of Roosevelt Island.
- bland-allison act — an act of Congress (1878) requiring the federal government to purchase at the market price from two to four million dollars' worth of silver monthly for conversion into silver dollars containing 16 times more silver per coin than gold in dollar coins of gold.
- blind carbon copy — a duplicate of anything written or typed, or a copy of an email or other electronic document, that is sent to someone whose name is not visible to the primary addressee. Abbreviation: bcc.
- blocking antibody — Immunology. an antibody that partly combines with an antigen and interferes with cell-mediated immunity, thereby preventing an allergic reaction.