12-letter words containing a, b, e, r
- bumper guard — either of two vertical crosspieces attached to a bumper of a motor vehicle to prevent it from locking bumpers with another vehicle.
- bumping race — (esp at Oxford and Cambridge) a race in which rowing eights start an equal distance one behind the other and each tries to bump the boat in front
- bureaucratic — Bureaucratic means involving complicated rules and procedures which can cause long delays.
- burmese jade — jadeite of the finest quality: a true jade.
- burnt orange — of a dark orange colour, sometimes due to calcination of orange pigment
- burnt sienna — a reddish-brown dye or pigment obtained by roasting raw sienna in a furnace
- burseraceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Burseraceae, a tropical family of trees and shrubs having compound leaves and resin or balsam in their stems. The family includes bdellium and some balsams
- bush leaguer — Also called busher. Baseball. a player in a minor league. an incompetent player, as one who behaves or plays as if he or she belonged in a minor league.
- bush-leaguer — (in baseball) someone who plays in a minor league
- butter paper — a semi-transparent, waterproof paper used for wrapping butter, etc
- butter sauce — a sauce made of melted butter, often diluted with water, sometimes thickened with flour or egg yolk, or both, and seasoned with lemon juice.
- buy the farm — a tract of land, usually with a house, barn, silo, etc., on which crops and often livestock are raised for livelihood.
- by and large — You use by and large to indicate that a statement is mostly but not completely true.
- by reason of — If one thing happens by reason of another, it happens because of it.
- by-a-whisker — whiskers, a beard.
- byelorussian — Byelorussian means belonging or relating to Byelorussia or to its people or culture.
- c beautifier — (cb) A Unix tool for reformatting C source code.
- cabbage rose — a rose, Rosa centifolia, with a round compact full-petalled head
- cabbage tree — a tree, Cordyline australis, of New Zealand having a tall branchless trunk and a palmlike top
- cabinetmaker — A cabinetmaker is a person who makes high-quality wooden furniture.
- cabriole leg — a type of furniture leg, popular in the first half of the 18th century, in which an upper convex curve descends tapering to a concave curve
- cacao butter — cocoa butter
- cadet branch — the family or family branch of a younger son
- caked breast — a painful hardening of one or more lobules of a lactating breast, caused by stagnation of milk in the secreting ducts and accumulation of blood in the expanded veins; stagnation mastitis.
- calabar bean — the dark brown very poisonous seed of a leguminous woody climbing plant, Physostigma venenosum, of tropical Africa, used as a source of the drug physostigmine
- calabrasella — a card game for three persons that is played with a 40-card pack made by removing the eights, nines, and tens from a regular 52-card pack.
- camber piece — a centering for a flat arch, slightly crowned to allow for settling of the arch.
- cancerphobia — an excessive fear of getting cancer
- canterburies — Plural form of canterbury.
- captive-bred — bred in captivity
- carbamylurea — biuret.
- carbocholine — carbachol.
- carbohydrase — a digestive enzyme that breaks down carbohydrates through hydrolysis
- carbohydrate — Carbohydrates are substances, found in certain kinds of food, that provide you with energy. Foods such as sugar and bread that contain these substances can also be referred to as carbohydrates.
- carbon cycle — the circulation of carbon between living organisms and their surroundings. Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is synthesized by plants into plant tissue, which is ingested and metabolized by animals and converted to carbon dioxide again during respiration and decay
- carbon fiber — a very strong, lightweight synthetic fiber used in protective clothing, spacecraft components, racing shells, etc.
- carbon fibre — a black silky thread of pure carbon made by heating and stretching textile fibres and used because of its lightness and strength at high temperatures for reinforcing resins, ceramics, and metals, esp in turbine blades and for fishing rods
- carbon paper — Carbon paper is thin paper with a dark substance on one side. You use it to make copies of letters, bills, and other papers.
- carbon steel — steel whose characteristics are determined by the amount of carbon it contains
- carbon value — an empirical measurement of the tendency of a lubricant to form carbon when in use
- carbonaceous — of, resembling, or containing carbon
- carbonatites — Plural form of carbonatite.
- carboxylated — Simple past tense and past participle of carboxylate.
- career break — If someone takes a career break, they stop working in their particular profession for a period of time, with the intention of returning to it later.
- carnal abuse — Law. any lascivious contact with the sexual organs of a child by an adult, especially without sexual intercourse.
- carpetbagged — Simple past tense and past participle of carpetbag.
- carpetbagger — If you call someone a carpetbagger, you disapprove of them because they are trying to become a politician in an area which is not their home, simply because they think they are more likely to succeed there.
- carpetbeater — A tool used in housecleaning that was in common use before the invention of the vacuum cleaner.
- carriageable — (of a road, etc) able to be travelled in a carriage
- carrick bend — type of knot