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16-letter words containing a, p, r, o, s

  • basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
  • bastard pointing — an imitation of tuck pointing, having a fillet made from the mortar of the joint.
  • batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
  • bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
  • board of pardons — an agency that determines which prisoners are to be released on parole or discretionary mandatory supervision and recommends pardons
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • brake horsepower — the rate at which an engine does work, expressed in horsepower. It is measured by the resistance of an applied brake
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
  • bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
  • bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
  • cantor's paradox — the paradox derived from the supposition of an all-inclusive universal set, since every set has more subsets than members while every subset of such a universal set would be a member of it
  • capsule wardrobe — a collection of clothes and accessories that includes only items considered essential
  • carbonless paper — a sheet of paper impregnated with dye which transfers writing or typing onto the copying surface below without the necessity for carbon pigment
  • carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
  • career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
  • caryophyllaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Caryophyllaceae, a family of flowering plants including the pink, carnation, sweet william, and chickweed
  • castor-oil plant — a tall euphorbiaceous Indian plant, Ricinus communis, cultivated in tropical regions for ornament and for its poisonous seeds, from which castor oil is extracted
  • catastrophically — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
  • chattel personal — an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
  • chemoprophylaxis — the prevention of disease using chemical drugs
  • chipping sparrow — a common North American sparrow, Spizella passerina, having brown-and-grey plumage and a white eye stripe
  • cholecystography — radiography of the gall bladder after administration of a contrast medium
  • chondrodysplasia — (medicine) A genetic disorder characterized by short-limbed dwarfism.
  • chromatographies — Plural form of chromatography.
  • colorado springs — a city and resort in central Colorado. Pop: 370 448 (2003 est)
  • compartmentalise — to divide into categories or compartments.
  • compression wave — a shock wave that compresses the medium through which it is transmitted.
  • conspiratorially — the act of conspiring.
  • contemporariness — existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same time: Newton's discovery of the calculus was contemporary with that of Leibniz.
  • conversation pit — a usually sunken portion of a room or living area with chairs, sofas, etc., often grouped around a fireplace, where people can gather to talk.
  • cops and robbers — a children's game in which a group of players imitate the behavior of police and of thieves, as in pursuing and capturing.
  • cops-and-robbers — A cops-and-robbers film, television programme, or book is one whose story involves the police trying to catch criminals.
  • cornet à pistons — a three-valved brass instrument of the trumpet family. Written range: about two and a half octaves upwards from E below middle C. It is a transposing instrument in B flat or A
  • cornet-a-pistons — cornet (def 1).
  • coroutine pascal — ["Control Separation in Programming languages", Lemon et al, ACM Ann Conf 1977].
  • corporal's guard — a squad commanded by a corporal
  • corporation stop — a cock controlling the flow of water or gas from mains to individual consumers.
  • counterespionage — Counterespionage is the same as counterintelligence.
  • counterproposals — Plural form of counterproposal.
  • court of appeals — A Court of Appeals is a court which deals with appeals against legal judgments.
  • craftspersonship — The body of activities, skills, techniques, knowledge, and expertise pertinent to (a) particular craft(s).
  • crime of passion — a crime, often a murder, committed from passion, esp sexual passion
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