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16-letter words containing a, b, o

  • biological child — any child conceived rather than adopted by a specified parent, and therefore carrying genes from the parent.
  • biological clock — Your biological clock is your body's way of registering time. It does not rely on events such as day or night, but on factors such as your habits, your age, and chemical changes taking place in your body.
  • biological value — the nutritional effectiveness of the protein in a given food, expressed as the percentage used by the body of either the total protein consumed or the digestible protein available.
  • biomagnification — biological magnification.
  • biotechnological — Biotechnological means relating to biotechnology.
  • biotic potential — the capacity of a population of organisms to increase in numbers under optimum environmental conditions.
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
  • bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
  • birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
  • birthwort family — the plant family Aristolochiaceae, typified by mostly tropical woody vines and herbaceous plants, having alternate, heart-shaped leaves and flowers lacking true petals but having three petallike sepals, and including the birthwort, Dutchman's-pipe, and wild ginger.
  • 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 chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • black propaganda — propaganda that does not come from the source it claims to come from
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • bleaching powder — a white powder with the odour of chlorine, consisting of chlorinated calcium hydroxide with an approximate formula CaCl(OCl).4H2O. It is used in solution as a bleaching agent and disinfectant
  • blink comparator — an optical instrument used to detect small differences in two photographs of the same field or object by viewing them alternately, switching rapidly from one to the other.
  • block and tackle — a hoisting device in which a rope or chain is passed around a pair of blocks containing one or more pulleys. The upper block is secured overhead and the lower block supports the load, the effort being applied to the free end of the rope or chain
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • blue dawn-flower — a tropical American vine, Ipomoea acuminata, of the morning glory family, having large, funnel-shaped flowers that turn from blue to pink.
  • bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.
  • board and batten — a siding consisting of wide boards or of sheets of plywood set vertically with butt joints covered by battens.
  • board of inquiry — a group set up to inquire into accidents, etc
  • board of pardons — an agency that determines which prisoners are to be released on parole or discretionary mandatory supervision and recommends pardons
  • boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
  • boarding officer — a coastguard who boards ships suspected of carrying illegal cargoes or posing a security risk
  • boatswain's mate — a job classification in the US navy
  • boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
  • bohemian waxwing — any of several songbirds of the family Bombycillidae, having a showy crest and certain feathers tipped with a red, waxy material, as Bombycilla garrulus (Bohemian waxwing) of the Northern Hemisphere.
  • 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
  • bombing campaign — a concerted, intensive and prolonged bombing of a target
  • bon gre, mal gre — whether willing or not; willy-nilly.
  • bonded warehouse — a warehouse in which dutiable goods are deposited until duty is paid or the goods are cleared for export
  • bonhomme richard — the flagship of John Paul Jones.
  • bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
  • book of the dead — in ancient Egypt, a book of prayers and charms meant to help the soul in the afterworld
  • boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • bordeaux mixture — a fungicide consisting of a solution of equal quantities of copper sulphate and quicklime
  • bordelaise sauce — a dark sauce made from meat stock, flour, wine, onions, seasonings, etc., served over broiled meat
  • boreal chickadee — a brown-capped, black-throated chickadee (Parus hudsonicus) found near the Atlantic coast from Labrador to N New York
  • bornholm disease — an epidemic virus infection characterized by pain round the base of the chest
  • borosilicic acid — any of several hypothetical acids that form borosilicates.
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • botanical garden — a place where collections of plants and trees are kept for scientific study and exhibition
  • bouillotte table — a small round table of the 18th century, having around its top a gallery within which a bouchon could be set for the playing of card games.
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