13-letter words containing a, b, d
- asses' bridge — pons asinorum
- asteroid belt — the concentrations of asteroids that move around the sun mainly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
- at the double — at twice normal marching speed
- austin dobson — (Henry) Austin, 1840–1921, English poet, biographer, and essayist.
- baal merodach — Marduk.
- bab el mandeb — a strait between SW Arabia and E Africa, connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden
- back and fill — to manoeuvre the sails by alternately filling and emptying them of wind to navigate in a narrow place
- back-end load — the final charges of commission and expenses made by an investment trust, insurance policy, etc, when the investor is paid out
- backdoor play — an offensive tactic whereby a player breaks away from a defender to receive a pass near the baseline in order to make a quick layup.
- backgrounders — Plural form of backgrounder.
- backgrounding — Present participle of background.
- backpedalling — to retard the forward motion by pressing backward on the pedal, especially of a bicycle with coaster brakes.
- backward roll — a gymnastic roll that is performed with the feet going first and the rest of the body and the head following
- backwardation — the difference between the spot price for a commodity, including rent and interest, and the forward price
- bacteriocidal — Alternative spelling of bactericidal.
- bad godesberg — official name of Godesberg.
- badminton cup — a long refreshing drink of claret with soda water and sugar
- baedeker raid — one of the German air raids in 1942 on places of cultural and historical importance in England
- baffin island — the largest island of the Canadian Arctic, between Greenland and Hudson Bay. Area: 476 560 sq km (184 000 sq miles)
- bail bondsman — an individual or firm that lends bail money to defendants awaiting trial
- bailey bridge — a temporary bridge made of prefabricated steel panels that can be rapidly assembled
- baily's beads — the brilliant points of sunlight that appear briefly around the moon, just before and after a total eclipse
- baker's dozen — thirteen
- baking powder — Baking powder is an ingredient used in cake making. It causes cakes to rise when they are in the oven.
- balanced diet — a diet consisting of the proper quantities and proportions of foods needed to maintain health or growth.
- balanced fund — a mutual fund made up of both stocks and bonds
- balanced line — a transmission line in which the oppositely directed components are symmetrical with respect to each other and to the ground.
- balanced step — any of a series of staircase winders so planned that they are nearly as wide at the inside of the stair as the adjacent fliers.
- balanced tree — (algorithm) An optimisation of a tree which aims to keep equal numbers of items on each subtree of each node so as to minimise the maximum path from the root to any leaf node. As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of faster search. A B-tree is a kind of balanced tree that can have more than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not restricted to being a binary tree).
- ball and ring — a simplified bead-and-reel turning, used especially in English and American furniture of the 17th century.
- ball handling — the control of the ball, as in basketball or soccer, by skillful dribbling and accurate passing.
- ballad stanza — a four-line stanza, often used in ballads, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme and have three stresses each and the first and third lines are unrhymed and have four stresses each
- ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
- balloon shade — a window shade that when raised is gathered into a series of puffy festoons created by inverted pleats in the fabric.
- baltic shield — the wide area of ancient rock in Scandinavia
- banana bender — a native or inhabitant of Queensland
- banana spider — a large, yellowish, tropical crab spider (Heteropoda venatoria) occasionally found in bunches of bananas shipped to the Temperate Zones
- band spectrum — a spectrum consisting of a number of bands of closely spaced lines that are associated with emission or absorption of radiation by molecules
- band together — If people band together, they meet and act as a group in order to try and achieve something.
- band-aid baby — a child conceived to strengthen a faltering relationship
- banded purple — any color having components of both red and blue, such as lavender, especially one deep in tone.
- banderilleros — Plural form of banderillero.
- bandicoot rat — any of three burrowing rats of the genera Bandicota and Nesokia, of S and SE Asia: family Muridae
- bandspreading — an additional tuning control in some radio receivers whereby a selected narrow band of frequencies can be spread over a wider frequency band, in order to give finer control of tuning
- bank discount — interest on a loan deducted from the principal amount when the loan is made and based on the loan's face value
- bar billiards — a table game in pubs, etc, in which short cues are used to pocket balls into holes scoring various points and guarded by wooden pegs that incur penalties if they are knocked over
- bar-and-grill — a place where food and alcoholic drinks are served to customers; a combined barroom and grillroom.
- barbados aloe — a tropical aloe, Aloe barbadensis (or A. vera), of the lily family, having clusters of yellow flowers: its juice is used medicinally.
- barefacedness — The state or quality of being barefaced.
- barnacle code — (programming, humour) Any piece of code (usually a static method) that has been appended to a class where it doesn't logically belong, due to a lack of anywhere else to put it.