12-letter words containing a, b, s
- bathing suit — A bathing suit is a piece of clothing which people wear when they go swimming.
- bathophilous — (of an organism) living in very deep water
- bathyscaphes — Plural form of bathyscaphe.
- bathyspheres — Plural form of bathysphere.
- batter's box — box1 (def 16a).
- battle clasp — clasp (def 4).
- battle dress — military field uniform and accouterments, generally camouflaged and stripped of all ornamentation.
- battlefields — Plural form of battlefield.
- battlefronts — Plural form of battlefront.
- battlewagons — Plural form of battlewagon.
- be at a loss — If you say that you are at a loss, you mean that you do not know what to do in a particular situation.
- beachcombers — Plural form of beachcomber.
- beaconsfield — a town in SE England, in Buckinghamshire. Pop: 12 292 (2001)
- beam compass — an instrument for drawing large circles or arcs, consisting of a horizontal beam along which two vertical legs slide
- beamsplitter — Alternative spelling of beam splitter.
- bean sprouts — the sprouts of newly germinated mung beans, eaten as a vegetable, esp in Chinese dishes
- bean-shooter — peashooter.
- bear witness — to give written or oral testimony
- bearableness — The characteristic of being bearable.
- bearded seal — a large gray-to-golden seal, Erignathus barbatus, inhabiting the Arctic Ocean and adjacent waters, having square foreflippers and a thick mustache of long bristles on each side of the muzzle.
- beardtongues — Plural form of beardtongue.
- bearskin rug — the pelt of a bear, used as a rug
- beaufort sea — part of the Arctic Ocean off the N coast of North America
- beaumarchais — Pierre Augustin Caron de (pjɛr oɡystɛ̃ karɔ̃ də). 1732–99, French dramatist, noted for his comedies The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784)
- beautifulest — (dated) Most beautiful; more beautiful than anyone or anything else.
- beauty salon — A beauty salon is the same as a beauty parlour.
- beauty sleep — sleep, esp sleep before midnight
- beauty strip — a narrow forest corridor left uncut alongside a road or body of water.
- beaver falls — a city in W Pennsylvania.
- beaver state — Oregon (used as a nickname).
- bed of nails — a situation or position of extreme difficulty
- bedside lamp — a lamp beside a bed
- beef sausage — a sausage made of beef rather than pork
- beggar-ticks — any of various plants, such as the bur marigold and tick trefoil, having fruits or seeds that cling to clothing, fur, etc
- behaviourism — Behaviourism is the belief held by some psychologists that the only valid method of studying the psychology of people or animals is to observe how they behave.
- bell gardens — a town in SW California, near Los Angeles.
- bell's palsy — a usually temporary paralysis of the muscles of the face, normally on one side
- below stairs — People sometimes use below stairs to refer to the servants in a rich household and the things that are connected with them.
- belteshazzar — the Babylonian name given to Daniel. Dan. 1:7.
- benefactress — a female benefactor
- bernese alps — a mountain range in SW Switzerland, the N central part of the Alps. Highest peak: Finsteraarhorn, 4274 m (14 022 ft)
- bernina alps — a mountain group in SE Switzerland, extending from the Rhateian Alps on the Italian border. Highest peak, Piz Bernina, 13,304 feet (4055 meters).
- bernina pass — a pass in the Alps between SE Switzerland and N Italy, east of Piz Bernina. Height: 2323 m (7622 ft)
- bespectacled — Someone who is bespectacled is wearing glasses.
- beta orionis — Rigel
- beta testing — (programming) Evaluation of a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software (or possibly hardware) by making it available to selected users ("beta testers") before it goes on general distribution. Beta testign aims to discover bugs that only occur in certain environments or under certain patterns of use, while reducing the volume of feedback to a manageable level. The testers benefit by having earlier access to new products, features and fixes. Beta testing may be preceded by "alpha testing", performed in-house by a handful of users (e.g. other developers or friends), who can be expected to give rapid, high quality feedback on design and usability. Once the product is considered to be usable for its intended purpose it then moves on to "beta testing" by a larger, but typically still limited, number of ordinary users, who may include external customers. Some companies such as Google or Degree Jungle stretch the definition, claiming their products are "in beta" for many months by millions of users. The term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. "Alpha test" was the unit test, module test or component test phase; "Beta Test" was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design.
- beta version — beta testing
- beth midrash — a place where Jews gather to study the Talmud and other religious writings; a small synagogue.
- beth shammai — the school of Jewish legal thought and hermeneutics founded in Jerusalem in the 1st century b.c. by the Jewish teacher Shammai and characterized by an austere or rigid interpretation of Jewish law and tradition.
- bevel square — a woodworker's square with an adjustable arm that can be set to mark out an angle or to check the slope of a surface