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16-letter words containing a, b, r, e

  • 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.
  • 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's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
  • 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 present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
  • bismarck herring — marinaded herring, served cold
  • bitterroot range — range of the Rocky Mountains, along the Ida.-Mont. border: highest peak, c. 11,000 ft (3,353 m)
  • black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
  • blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
  • blackwater fever — a rare and serious complication of malaria, characterized by massive destruction of red blood cells, producing dark red or blackish urine
  • 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
  • blended learning — the use of both classroom teaching and on-line learning
  • blind man's rule — a carpenter's rule having large numbers to permit its reading in dim light.
  • blind salamander — any of several North American salamanders, especially of the genera Typhlotriton, Typhlomolge, and Haideotriton, that inhabit underground streams or deep wells and have undeveloped eyes and scant pigmentation.
  • 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.
  • blue-green algae — any of a division (Cyanophycota) of photosynthetic monerans, microorganisms that contain a blue pigment which obscures the chlorophyll; cyanobacteria
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • bragg scattering — the diffraction phenomenon exhibited by a crystal bombarded with x-rays in such a way that each plane of the crystal lattice acts as a reflector (Bragg reflector)
  • braille embosser — Braille printer
  • brain-fever bird — an Indian cuckoo, Cuculus varius, that utters a repetitive call
  • brake horsepower — the rate at which an engine does work, expressed in horsepower. It is measured by the resistance of an applied brake
  • braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
  • branchial groove — one of a series of rudimentary depressions on the surface of the embryo between adjacent branchial arches, homologous to the branchial clefts of gill-breathing ancestral forms.
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • brand acceptance — the extent to which consumers recognize and welcome a brand
  • brandenburg gate — the only remaining city gate in Berlin, built by Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia in 1788–1791 as a symbol of peace and now one of the city's landmarks
  • brandy alexander — an Alexander cocktail made with brandy
  • brass instrument — a musical wind instrument of brass or other metal with a cup-shaped mouthpiece, as the trombone, tuba, French horn, trumpet, or cornet.
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