15-letter words containing v
- brillat-savarin — Anthelme (ɑ̃tɛlm). 1755–1826, French lawyer and gourmet; author of Physiologie du Goût (1825)
- brown-and-serve — requiring only a brief period of browning, as in an oven, before being ready to serve: brown-and-serve rolls.
- bucket conveyor — a conveyor consisting of an endless chain with a series of buckets attached at regular intervals, used for moving ore, gravel, grain, or other bulk materials.
- bucket elevator — a chain of buckets for raising liquids or materials to a higher level
- buffer overflow — (programming) What happens when you try to store more data in a buffer than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun and firehose syndrome), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that crunches a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in lossage as input from a long line overflows the buffer and overwrites data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full. See also spam, overrun screw.
- bulimia nervosa — a disorder characterized by compulsive overeating followed by vomiting: sometimes associated with anxiety about gaining weight
- bun in the oven — in the womb
- butterfly valve — a disc that acts as a valve by turning about a diameter, esp one used as the throttle valve in a carburettor
- button mangrove — a tropical tree, Conocarpus erectus, having small, reddish, conelike fruits and bark used in tanning.
- cadmean victory — a victory won with great losses to the victors
- caernarvonshire — (until 1974) a county of NW Wales, now part of Gwynedd
- calorific value — the quantity of heat produced by the complete combustion of a given mass of a fuel, usually expressed in joules per kilogram
- calvin coolidge — Calvin, 1872–1933, 30th president of the U.S. 1923–29.
- cantilever beam — a long thick straight-sided piece of wood, metal, concrete, etc that is fixed at one end and is free at the other
- cape horn fever — illness feigned by malingerers.
- cardinal virtue — anything considered to be an important or characteristic virtue: Tenacity is his cardinal virtue.
- cardinal vowels — a set of theoretical vowel sounds, based on the shape of the mouth needed to articulate them, that can be used to classify the vowel sounds of any speaker in any language
- careers adviser — a person trained in giving vocational advice, esp in secondary, further, or higher education
- carl xvi gustaf — born 1946, king of Sweden from 1973
- carnivorousness — flesh-eating: A dog is a carnivorous animal.
- carpentersville — a city in NE Illinois, near Chicago.
- cartesian diver — a glass vessel partially filled with water and covered with an airtight membrane, containing a hollow object that is open at the bottom and contains just enough air to allow it to float. Pressing on the membrane compresses the air in the vessel and forces water into the object, causing it to sink; releasing the membrane causes it to rise.
- catarrhal fever — bluetongue.
- cavalry officer — an officer in a cavalry regiment
- celo-navigation — celestial navigation.
- central reserve — the strip, often covered with grass, that separates the two sides of a motorway or dual carriageway
- cerebrovascular — of or relating to the blood vessels and the blood supply of the brain
- cervical cancer — a cancer of the cervix (the lower end of the womb)
- cervical plexus — a network of nerves branching from the spinal nerves of the neck region and innervating the neck, chest, diaphragm, and part of the face.
- change of venue — the removal of a trial out of one jurisdiction into another
- character level — the stage or rank of a player character in a role-playing game or video game: When you advance to a higher character level, your character will have access to more advanced skills.
- charlottesville — city in central Va.: pop. 45,000
- charm offensive — If you say that someone has launched a charm offensive, you disapprove of the fact that they are being very friendly to their opponents or people who are causing problems for them.
- chemoprevention — the prevention of disease, esp cancer, by means of chemical agents
- cheval de frise — a portable obstacle, usually a sawhorse, covered with projecting spikes or barbed wire, for military use in closing a passage, breaking in a defensive wall, etc.
- cheval-de-frise — a portable barrier of spikes, sword blades, etc, used to obstruct the passage of cavalry
- chicken-livered — timid; fearful; cowardly.
- chief executive — the person with overall responsibility for the efficient running of a company, organization, etc
- church slavonic — Old Church Slavonic, esp as preserved in the liturgical use of the Orthodox church
- circumnavigable — Able to be circumnavigated.
- circumnavigated — Simple past tense and past participle of circumnavigate.
- circumnavigates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of circumnavigate.
- circumnavigator — A person who circumnavigates; that is, sails around the world.
- circumscriptive — That circumscribes or outlines.
- circumvallating — Present participle of circumvallate.
- circumvallation — surrounded by or as if by a rampart.
- circumvolutions — Plural form of circumvolution.
- ciudad victoria — a city in E central Mexico, capital of Tamaulipas state. Pop: 285 000 (2005 est)
- civil liberties — A person's civil liberties are the rights they have to say, think, and do what they want as long as they respect other people's rights.
- civilianization — the conversion from military to civilian status