15-letter words containing a, b, k
- pickaback plane — a powered airplane designed to be carried aloft by another airplane and released in flight.
- pickaback plant — piggyback plant.
- piggyback plant — a plant, Tolmiea menziesii, of the saxifrage family, native to western North America, that produces new plants at the base of its broad, hairy leaves and that is popular as a houseplant.
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- plumber's snake — snake (def 3a).
- power breakfast — If business people have a power breakfast, they go to a restaurant early in the morning so that they can have a meeting while they eat breakfast.
- prairie breaker — breaker1 (def 6).
- public speaking — the act of delivering speeches in public.
- quadruple bucky — Obsolete. 1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
- quarter blanket — a horse blanket, usually placed under a saddle or harness and extending to the horse's tail.
- qwerty keyboard — a keyboard having the arrangement of alphabetical and numerical keys found on the traditional typewriter
- record-breaking — top, most successful
- red-back spider — a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, of Australia and New Zealand, related to the black widow spider and having a bright red stripe on the back.
- rib-eye (steak) — a beefsteak cut from the rib section, with the bone removed
- riverbank grape — a high-climbing vine, Vitis riparia, of eastern North America, having fragrant flowers and nearly black fruit.
- runabout ticket — a rail ticket that allows unlimited travel within a specified area for a limited period of time (for example one day, a weekend, three days, etc)
- rusty blackbird — a North American blackbird, Euphagus carolinus, the male of which has plumage that is uniformly bluish-black in the spring and rusty-edged in the fall.
- salisbury steak — ground beef, sometimes mixed with other foods, shaped like a hamburger patty and broiled or fried, often garnished or served with a sauce.
- sand-lime brick — a hard brick composed of silica sand and a lime of high calcium content, molded under high pressure and baked.
- see the back of — to be rid of
- shock probation — the release on probation of a criminal after brief imprisonment
- shopping basket — a metal or plastic container with one or two handles, used to carry shopping in a shop
- sink a borehole — To sink a borehole means to drill a deep hole in the ground.
- skimble-scamble — rambling; confused; nonsensical: a skimble-scamble explanation.
- social bookmark — the practice of saving bookmarked Web pages to a public website as a way to share the links with other Internet users: Social bookmarking is a tool that allows you to add tags and comments to your bookmarks.
- spiral notebook — a notebook held together by a coil of wire passed through small holes punched at the back edge of the covers and individual pages
- starting blocks — the rigid blocks adjustable at an angle and mounted on a track against which a runner's shoes are placed to aid in starting
- straight-backed — having a straight, usually high, back: a straight-backed chair.
- strawberry mark — a small, reddish, slightly raised birthmark.
- take sb to task — If you take someone to task, you criticize them or tell them off because of something bad or wrong that they have done.
- tamarisk gerbil — gerbil (def 2).
- the black death — a form of bubonic plague pandemic in Europe and Asia during the 14th century, when it killed over 50 million people
- the black ferns — the women's international Rugby Union football team of New Zealand
- the black stump — an imaginary marker of the extent of civilization (esp in the phrase beyond the black stump)
- the black watch — (formerly) the Royal Highland Regiment in the British Army; (since 2006) an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland
- the tall blacks — the international basketball team of New Zealand
- thermal blanket — a specially warm blanket
- thomas a becket — Saint Thomas à, 1118?–70, archbishop of Canterbury: murdered because of his opposition to Henry II's policies toward the church.
- tidal benchmark — a benchmark used as a reference for tidal observations.
- to draw a blank — If you draw a blank when you are looking for someone or something, you do not succeed in finding them.
- trade paperback — a paperback book of a size similar to a typical hard-cover book, intended for sale in bookstores as distinguished from a cheaper and smaller paperback intended for sale on racks at drugstores, newsstands, etc.
- traveling block — (in a hoisting tackle) the block hooked to and moving with the load.
- turkish tobacco — a strongly aromatic tobacco, grown chiefly in Turkey and Greece, used in cigarettes.
- unknowledgeable — possessing or exhibiting knowledge, insight, or understanding; intelligent; well-informed; discerning; perceptive.
- unskilled labor — work that requires practically no training or experience for its adequate or competent performance.
- vegetable knife — a knife designed to cut up vegetables
- white bear lake — a city in E Minnesota: summer resort.