12-letter words containing a, b, u
- black tongue — canine pellagra.
- black walnut — a North American walnut tree, Juglans nigra, with hard dark wood and edible oily nuts
- black-figure — pertaining to or designating a style of vase painting developed in Greece in the 7th and 6th centuries b.c., chiefly characterized by silhouetted figures painted in black slip on a red clay body, details incised into the design, and a two-dimensional structure of form and space.
- blackcurrant — In Europe, blackcurrants are a type of very small, dark purple fruits that grow in bunches on bushes.
- blank cheque — If someone is given a blank cheque, they are given the authority to spend as much money as they need or want.
- blastulation — the process of blastula formation
- blaue reiter — der Blaue Reiter. a group of German expressionist painters formed in Munich in 1911, including Kandinsky and Klee, who sought to express the spiritual side of man and nature, which they felt had been neglected by impressionism
- blue catfish — a large freshwater catfish, Ictalurus furcatus, that is a popular food fish in the states of the Mississippi River valley.
- blue jasmine — a southern U.S. shrubby vine, Clematis crispa, of the buttercup family, having solitary, bell-shaped, blue or bluish-purple to pink flowers and bearing fruit with silky appendages.
- blue-sky law — a state law regulating the trading of securities: intended to protect investors from fraud
- bluefin tuna — the largest tuna (Thunnus thynnus): it has bright red flesh and is important as a game and food fish
- blues guitar — blues guitar music
- bluesnarfing — the practice of using one Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone to steal contact details, ring tones, images, etc from another
- boar-hunting — the practice of hunting wild boars
- boarding out — the local-authority practice of placing a client in a foster family or voluntary establishment and paying for it
- boatbuilding — Boatbuilding is the craft or industry of making boats.
- 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
- border guard — a guard stationed on a border between countries
- borough hall — a building housing the administrative offices of a borough.
- bottom quark — a type of quark with a mass of c. 4.7 to 5.3 GeV/c2, a negative charge that is 1⁄3 the charge of an electron, zero charm, and zero strangeness
- boudin blanc — a boiled sausage made with light-colored meat, as veal or chicken, and without blood
- bougainville — an island in the W Pacific, in Papua New Guinea: the largest of the Solomon Islands: unilaterally declared independence in 1990; occupied by government troops in 1992, and granted autonomy in 2001. Chief town: Kieta. Area: 10 049 sq km (3880 sq miles)
- boulangerite — a bluish lead-gray mineral, lead antimony sulfide, Pb 5 Sb 4 S 11 , a minor ore of lead.
- boulder clay — an unstratified glacial deposit consisting of fine clay, boulders, and pebbles
- boulevardier — (originally in Paris) a fashionable man, esp one who frequents public places
- bounce flash — a flash lamp designed to produce a bounced flash.
- bound charge — any electric charge that is bound to an atom or molecule (opposed to free charge).
- brachycerous — (of insects) having short antennae
- bradmanesque — (of a batsman or innings) reminiscent of Sir Don Bradman in terms of dominance over the opposing bowlers
- brain tumour — a tumour that is situated in the brain
- brains trust — a group of knowledgeable people who discuss topics in public or on radio or television
- brass plaque — a brass plate screwed to a wall or other structure and engraved with a name or other information, esp to commemorate an important event
- brassfounder — a person who makes things from brass
- braunschweig — Brunswick
- break ground — to do something that has not been done before
- breakthrough — A breakthrough is an important development or achievement.
- breastplough — a plough driven by the worker's breast, often used to pare turf
- breastsummer — a girder extending across a large opening in a building to support the wall above, used primarily over shop-fronts
- breath group — a sequence of sounds articulated in the course of a single exhalation; an utterance or part of an utterance produced between pauses for breath.
- breuer chair — a chair with a frame of continuous chrome tubing, no back legs, and cane seat and back
- brevicaudate — having a short tail.
- bridal suite — a room or set of rooms in a hotel for newly married couples
- bring around — If you bring someone around when they are unconscious, you make them become conscious again.
- broad church — You can refer to an organization, group, or area of activity as a broad church when it includes a wide range of opinions, beliefs, or styles.
- broad jumper — a participant in the long jump.
- brochureware — (jargon, business) A planned, but non-existent, product, like vaporware but with the added implication that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed to con customers into not committing to a competing existing product. The term is now especially applicable to new websites, website revisions, and ancillary services such as customer support and product return. Owing to the explosion of database-driven, cookie-using dot-coms (of the sort that can now deduce that you are, in fact, a dog), the term is now also used to describe sites made up of static HTML pages that contain not much more than contact info and mission statements. The term suggests that the company is small, irrelevant to the web, local in scope, clueless, broke, just starting out, or some combination thereof. Many new companies without product, funding, or even staff, post brochureware with investor info and press releases to help publicise their ventures. As of December 1999, examples include pop.com and cdradio.com. Small-timers that really have no business on the web such as lawncare companies and divorce laywers inexplicably have brochureware made that stays unchanged for years.
- 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)
- brushability — the quality of being brushable
- bubble dance — a solo dance by a nude or nearly nude woman, as in a burlesque show, using one or more balloons for covering.
- bubble float — a hollow spherical float that can be weighted with water to aid casting