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19-letter words containing a, b

  • behavioural science — the application of scientific methods to the study of the behaviour of organisms
  • belgian east africa — a former Belgian trust territory in Africa, also (1924–62) Ruanda-Urundi, now the independent countries of Rwanda and Burundi.
  • below par/under par — If you feel below par or under par, you feel tired and unable to perform as well as you normally do.
  • bend over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
  • benefit performance — a theatrical or musical performance in aid of charity
  • benzylidene acetone — a colorless, crystalline, water-insoluble solid, C 10 H 10 O, having a vanillalike odor, used chiefly as a scent in the manufacture of perfume.
  • beta-naphthyl group — See under naphthyl.
  • betamethyl acrolein — crotonaldehyde.
  • betwixt and between — in an intermediate, indecisive, or middle position
  • bi-lateral symmetry — a basic body plan in which the left and right sides of the organism can be divided into approximate mirror images of each other along the midline.
  • bicarbonate of soda — Bicarbonate of soda is a white powder which is used in baking to make cakes rise, and also as a medicine for your stomach.
  • big-leaved magnolia — evergreen magnolia.
  • bilingual education — schooling in which those not fluent in the standard or national language are taught in their own language.
  • bill of particulars — an itemized statement of claims or counterclaims provided to the opposing party of a lawsuit
  • binary large object — (database)   (BLOB) A large block of data stored in a database, such as an image or sound file. A BLOB has no structure which can be interpreted by the database management system but is known only by its size and location.
  • binding arbitration — dispute resolution
  • binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
  • binomial experiment — an experiment consisting of a fixed number of independent trials each with two possible outcomes, success and failure, and the same probability of success. The probability of a given number of successes is described by a binominal distribution
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • black carpenter ant — a large, black ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, that lives in damp wood in nature or in houses, where it can cause considerable damage by boring or tunneling.
  • black carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
  • black forest gateau — a chocolate sponge cake containing morello cherries and whipped cream, with a topping of chocolate icing
  • black warrior river — a river in N central Alabama, flowing SW past Birmingham to the Tombigbee River. 178 miles (286 km) long.
  • black-billed cuckoo — a black-billed North American cuckoo, Coccyzus erythropthalmus, that, unlike most cuckoos, constructs its own nest and rears its own young.
  • black-billed magpie — either of two corvine birds, Pica pica (black-billed magpie) of Eurasia and North America, or P. nuttalli (yellow-billed magpie) of California, having long, graduated tails, black-and-white plumage, and noisy, mischievous habits.
  • black-footed ferret — a musteline mammal, Mustela nigripes, of W North America, closely related to the weasels
  • black-tailed godwit — a large wading bird with a very long beak, Limosa limosa, found in W and Central Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia
  • blackbelly rosefish — a reddish scorpionfish, Helicolenus dactylopterus, inhabiting the deep waters of the western Atlantic Ocean.
  • blackfellow's bread — the edible portion of a species of pore fungus, Polyporus mylittae, that occurs in Australia.
  • blackstrap molasses — the molasses remaining after the maximum quantity of sugar has been extracted from the raw material
  • blast from the past — You can use a blast from the past as a light-hearted way of referring to something such as an old song or fashion that you hear or notice again, and which reminds you of an earlier time.
  • blind carbon (copy) — a carbon copy of a letter sent to someone other than the addressee, with no indication on the original letter that such a copy has been sent
  • blood alcohol level — the amount of alcohol in someone's blood
  • blood-brain barrier — the barrier created by the walls of the capillaries of the brain that prevents certain substances, as most proteins and drugs, from passing from the blood into the brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid
  • blow the gaffe/gaff — If you blow the gaffe or blow the gaff, you tell someone something that other people wanted you to keep secret.
  • blue stellar object — any of a class of blue celestial objects, at one time thought to be stars, that do not emit appreciable radio waves. Abbreviation: BSO.
  • blue-breasted quail — a small, brightly colored quail, Coturnix chinensis, of southern Asia and Australia, widely kept as a cage bird.
  • blue-tongued lizard — a large Australian lizard, Tiliqua scincoides, characterized by having a cobalt-blue tongue.
  • board certification — the process of certifying that a physician has passed an examination and met the standards of a professional organization representing a particular medical specialty.
  • board of trade unit — a unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt-hour
  • boat-tailed grackle — a large grackle, Quiscalus major, of the southeastern U.S., that folds its tail into a shape resembling the keel of a boat.
  • booker t washington — Booker T(aliaferro) [boo k-er tol-uh-ver] /ˈbʊk ər ˈtɒl ə vər/ (Show IPA), 1856–1915, U.S. reformer, educator, author, and lecturer.
  • bottomhole assembly — The bottomhole assembly is the lower part of a drill string, which has the drill bit and mud motor.
  • bound hand and foot — with hands and feet tied
  • boundary commission — (in Britain) a body established by statute to undertake periodic reviews of the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies and to recommend changes to take account of population shifts
  • bracket abstraction — (compiler)   An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application. See combinator.
  • brand contamination — the process by which the reputation of a particular brand or product becomes tarnished by adverse publicity
  • brazen law of wages — the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living.
  • breach of the peace — A breach of the peace is noisy or violent behaviour in a public place which is illegal because it disturbs other people.
  • breath of fresh air — sth new
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