12-letter words containing a, b, s, o
- board school — (formerly) a school managed by a board elected by local ratepayers
- board shorts — shorts with longer legs, originally meant to protect a surfer's legs against the surfboard
- boardsailing — windsurfing
- boatsmanship — seamanship as applied to boats, especially rowboats and motorboats.
- body fascism — intolerance of those whose bodies do not conform to a particular view of what is desirable
- body repairs — repairs to the bodywork of cars
- body scanner — a machine using X-rays and a computer, used in medicine to look for signs of disease, or in security operations to look for drugs, weapons, etc
- bog asphodel — either of two liliaceous plants, Narthecium ossifragum of Europe or N. americanum of North America, that grow in boggy places and have small yellow flowers and grasslike leaves
- bog rosemary — any of several species (genus Andromeda) of evergreen shrubs of the heath family, native to cold bogs of North America and Europe, with pink flowers and narrow leaves
- bog-standard — If you describe something as bog-standard you mean that is an ordinary example of its kind, with no exciting or interesting features.
- bombacaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Bombacaceae, a family of tropical trees, including the kapok tree and baobab, that have very thick stems, often with water-storing tissue
- bombay hills — a row of hills marking the southern boundary of greater Auckland on the North Island, New Zealand
- bond servant — a person who serves in bondage; slave.
- bond washing — a series of deals in bonds made with the intention of avoiding taxation
- bonnet glass — monteith (def 2).
- bonnet-glass — a large punch bowl, usually of silver, having a notched rim for suspending punch cups.
- book matches — safety matches made of paper and fastened into a small cardboard folder
- boomer state — Oklahoma
- booster seat — A booster seat or a booster cushion is a special seat which allows a small child to sit in a higher position, for example at a table or in a car.
- boot-scraper — a contraption consisting of an upright metal shape formerly placed outside some houses to enable people to scrape the mud from their boots before going in
- border state — a state adjacent to a border
- border taxes — taxes payable on goods taken across a border
- borosilicate — a salt of boric and silicic acids
- bottle glass — glass used for making bottles, consisting of a silicate of sodium, calcium, and aluminium
- bottlewasher — a person or machine that washes bottles.
- bottom grass — any grass that grows on bottoms or lowlands.
- bottom yeast — a yeast whose cells, in the manufacture of wine and lager beer, fall to the bottom as a sediment.
- bounce flash — a flash lamp designed to produce a bounced flash.
- box lacrosse — a form of lacrosse played indoors, usually on a hockey rink with a wooden floor, between two teams of six players.
- boyoma falls — a series of seven cataracts in the NE Democratic Republic of Congo, on the upper River Congo: forms an unnavigable stretch of 90 km (56 miles), which falls 60 m (200 ft)
- brachycerous — (of insects) having short antennae
- braggadocios — empty boasting; bragging.
- brainstormer — a person who brainstorms
- brass-collar — unwaveringly faithful to a political party; voting the straight ticket: a brass-collar Democrat.
- brassfounder — a person who makes things from brass
- breastplough — a plough driven by the worker's breast, often used to pare turf
- breaststroke — Breaststroke is a swimming stroke which you do lying on your front, moving your arms and legs horizontally in a circular motion.
- brisbane box — a broad-leaved evergreen tree, Tristania conferta, native to Australia, having a deciduous outer bark.
- broadcasting — Broadcasting is the making and sending out of television and radio programmes.
- broca's area — the region of the cerebral cortex of the brain concerned with speech; the speech centre
- bronchospasm — an abnormal contraction of the bronchi resulting in restriction of the airway
- brontosaurus — any very large herbivorous quadrupedal dinosaur of the genus Apatosaurus, common in North America during Jurassic times, having a long neck and long tail: suborder Sauropoda (sauropods)
- brooks range — a mountain range in N Alaska. Highest peak: Mount Isto, 2761 m (9058 ft)
- brooks's law — (programming) "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
- buenos aires — the capital of Argentina, a major port and industrial city on the Río de la Plata estuary: became capital in 1880; university (1821). Pop: 13 349 000 (2005 est)
- buffalo fish — any of a genus (Ictiobus) of large, humpbacked, freshwater sucker fishes found in North America
- bunco artist — a confidence trickster or con artist
- burkina faso — an inland republic in W Africa: dominated by Mossi kingdoms (10th–19th centuries); French protectorate established in 1896; became an independent republic in 1960; consists mainly of a flat savanna plateau. Official language: French; Mossi and other African languages also widely spoken. Religion: mostly animist, with a large Muslim minority. Currency: franc. Capital: Ouagadougou. Pop: 17 812 961 (2013 est). Area: 273 200 sq km (105 900 sq miles)
- burro's tail — a succulent Mexican plant, Sedum morganianum, of the stonecrop family, bearing small, rose-colored flowers and long, hanging, nearly cylindrical stems with closely packed whitish-green leaves.
- burseraceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Burseraceae, a tropical family of trees and shrubs having compound leaves and resin or balsam in their stems. The family includes bdellium and some balsams