15-letter words containing a, b, k
- blockade-runner — a ship or person that passes through a blockade.
- blueback salmon — sockeye salmon.
- book of account — a book to keep accounts in; ledger
- book of changes — an ancient Chinese book of divination, in which 64 pairs of trigrams are shown with various interpretations.
- bookmaking firm — an organization that accepts bets from gamblers and pays out winnings
- brackett series — a series of lines in the infrared spectrum of hydrogen.
- brake parachute — a parachute attached to the rear of a vehicle and opened to assist braking
- break and entry — breaking and entering.
- break statement — (programming) A statement in the C programming language that transfers control out of the innermost enclosing switch, while, do, or for statement. The statement also exists in languages derived from C, such as C++ and Java.
- break the mould — If you say that someone breaks the mould, you mean that they do completely different things from what has been done before or from what is usually done.
- break-in period — a period during which certain restrictions or moderation in operating should be followed, as the avoidance of high speed, rapid acceleration, or severe braking for a new automobile.
- break-out group — a group of people who detach themselves from a larger group or meeting in order to hold separate discussions
- breakbone fever — dengue
- breakdown cover — insurance cover against breakdowns in a vehicle
- breakeven chart — a graph measuring the value of an enterprise's revenue and costs against some index of its activity, such as percentage capacity. The intersection of the total revenue and total cost curves gives the breakeven point
- breakeven point — a point at which the total revenue and total cost are equal
- breakfast table — You refer to a table as the breakfast table when it is being used for breakfast.
- breaking plough — a plough with a long shallow mouldboard for turning virgin land or sod land
- breaking strain — the amount of strain that, if applied to a particular material, will cause it to break
- bronzed grackle — the western subspecies of the American bird, the common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula versicolor, having bronzy, iridescent plumage.
- brushback pitch — a fast ball deliberately thrown at or too near a batter's head
- bucket elevator — a chain of buckets for raising liquids or materials to a higher level
- buckinghamshire — a county in SE central England, containing the Vale of Aylesbury and parts of the Chiltern Hills: the geographic and ceremonial county includes Milton Keynes, which became an independent unitary authority in 1997. Administrative centre: Aylesbury. Pop (excluding Milton Keynes): 478 000 (2003 est). Area (excluding Milton Keynes): 1568 sq km (605 sq miles)
- bullock's heart — the large, edible fruit of a tropical American tree, Annona reticulata.
- bullock's-heart — the large, edible fruit of a tropical American tree, Annona reticulata.
- buy-back option — the option for a company to buy some or all of its shares from an investor, who acquired them by putting venture capital into the company when it was formed
- by a long chalk — You can use by a long chalk to add emphasis to something you are saying.
- calcium blocker — any of a group of drugs that prevent the influx of calcium into excitable tissues such as smooth muscle of the heart or arterioles, used in the treatment of angina, hypertension, and certain arrhythmias.
- camelback truss — a roof truss having upper and lower chords curving upward from a common point at each side.
- center halfback — Field Hockey. the player in the middle among the halfbacks.
- cinderella book — (publication) "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation", by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also book titles.
- circuit breaker — A circuit breaker is a device which can stop the flow of electricity around a circuit by switching itself off if anything goes wrong.
- collecting bank — a bank that collects money from the account of the writer of a cheque on behalf of the person who has deposited the cheque into the bank
- comfort blanket — a blanket that a young child is very attached to
- commercial bank — a bank primarily concerned with accepting demand deposits, used as checking accounts
- contact breaker — a switching device used in the distributor of an internal-combustion engine which controls the timing of the spark that ignites the spark plug
- counterblockade — a retaliatory blockade
- crackback block — a block in which a player, usually a wide receiver, angles back sharply towards the middle of the field and blocks a defensive player from the side
- darkling beetle — any of a family (Tenebrionidae) of sluggish, dark beetles that feed on plants at night
- dog's breakfast — a disorderly mixture; hodgepodge.
- donnybrook fair — a fair which until 1855 was held annually at Donnybrook, County Dublin, Ireland, and which was famous for rioting and dissipation.
- dvorak keyboard — a keyboard designed to facilitate typing speed by having the most frequently used characters on the home row, with all the vowels on the left side.
- eat like a bird — 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.
- elm bark beetle — the bark-boring beetle (Scolytus multistriatus) that feeds on the bark of elm trees and carries Dutch elm disease
- emergency brake — hand brake in car
- engagement book — couple
- false buckthorn — a spiny shrub or small tree, Bumelia lanuginosa, of the sapodilla family, native to the southern U.S., having gummy, milky sap and white, bell-shaped flowers and yielding a hard, light-brown wood.
- garboard strake — the first strake on each side of a keel.
- gaudier-brzeska — Henri (ɑ̃ri), original name Henri Gaudier. 1891–1915, French vorticist sculptor
- give me a break — to smash, split, or divide into parts violently; reduce to pieces or fragments: He broke a vase.