16-letter words containing a, b, e, t, i
- bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
- basal anesthesia — anesthesia induced as a preliminary to further and deeper anesthesia
- basal metabolism — the amount of energy required by an individual in the resting state, for such functions as breathing and circulation of the blood
- basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
- bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bathroom cabinet — a wall-mounted cabinet in a bathroom, typically with a mirror front and used for the storage of medicines and toiletries
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- be of assistance — Someone or something that is of assistance to you is helpful or useful to you.
- be the making of — to cause the success of
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beautiful people — wealthy, fashionable people of the leisure class
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- belgian tervuren — one of a Belgian breed of medium-sized dogs having a long, straight coat, fawn to mahogany in color, differing from the Belgian sheepdog only in color.
- belted-bias tire — a motor-vehicle tire of the same construction as a bias-ply tire but with an added belt of steel or a strong synthetic material under the tread.
- benoit samuelson — Joan (Joan Benoit) born 1957, U.S. distance runner: first Olympic marathon women's winner, 1984.
- bermuda triangle — an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida where ships and aeroplanes are alleged to have disappeared mysteriously
- beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
- beta coefficient — a measure of the extent to which a particular security rises or falls in value in response to market movements
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- bimetallic strip — a strip consisting of two metals of different coefficients of expansion welded together so that it buckles on heating: used in thermostats, etc
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
- binomial theorem — a mathematical theorem that gives the expansion of any binomial raised to a positive integral power, n. It contains n + 1 terms: (x + a)n = xn + nxn–1a + [n(n–1)/2] xn–2a2 +…+ (nk) xn–kak + … + an, where (nk) = n!/(n–k)!k!, the number of combinations of k items selected from n
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- biodeterioration — biodegradation.
- bioenvironmental — pertaining to the environment of living organisms: Bioenvironmental engineers seek to reduce air and water pollution.
- biotechnological — Biotechnological means relating to biotechnology.
- biotic potential — the capacity of a population of organisms to increase in numbers under optimum environmental conditions.
- bird in the hand — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- bit-mapped image — a computer image that is held in memory as a series of colored dots in a grid, each dot represented by one or more bits.
- bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
- bitterroot range — range of the Rocky Mountains, along the Ida.-Mont. border: highest peak, c. 11,000 ft (3,353 m)
- black bottom pie — a rich pie with a rum- or whiskey-flavored chocolate filling, often with a crust of crushed gingersnaps, and topped with whipped cream.
- black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
- blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
- blasting gelatin — a type of plastic dynamite containing about 7 percent of a cellulose nitrate, used chiefly in underwater work.
- blue in the face — the pure color of a clear sky; the primary color between green and violet in the visible spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 450 and 500 nm.
- blue-winged teal — a small North American duck (Anas discors) found on ponds and rivers
- boatswain's mate — a job classification in the US navy
- boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
- bomb calorimeter — a device for determining heats of combustion by igniting a sample in a high pressure of oxygen in a sealed vessel and measuring the resulting rise in temperature: used for measuring the calorific value of foods
- bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
- bordeaux mixture — a fungicide consisting of a solution of equal quantities of copper sulphate and quicklime