16-letter words containing a, d, r, t
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beat to the draw — to be quicker than (another) in doing something, as in drawing one's weapon
- belted-bias tire — a motor-vehicle tire of the same construction as a bias-ply tire but with an added belt of steel or a strong synthetic material under the tread.
- bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
- bermuda triangle — an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida where ships and aeroplanes are alleged to have disappeared mysteriously
- bertrand russell — (person) (1872-1970) A British mathematician, the discoverer of Russell's paradox.
- best-before date — a date on packaged food indicating how long it is safe to keep it
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- biodeterioration — biodegradation.
- 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.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- 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
- board and batten — a siding consisting of wide boards or of sheets of plywood set vertically with butt joints covered by battens.
- 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.
- bordeaux mixture — a fungicide consisting of a solution of equal quantities of copper sulphate and quicklime
- 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
- 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
- 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
- brave west winds — the strong west and west-northwest winds blowing between latitudes 40° S and 60° S.
- bread and butter — Something that is the bread and butter of a person or organization is the activity or work that provides the main part of their income.
- bread-and-butter — providing a livelihood or basic source of income; supplying the basic needs of life: a bread-and-butter job; the agency's bread-and-butter account.
- break the record — surpass previous highest, best
- brick-and-mortar — pertaining to conventional stores, businesses, etc., having physical buildings and facilities, as opposed to Internet or remote services.
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- bright's disease — chronic inflammation of the kidneys; chronic nephritis
- british honduras — Belize
- brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
- broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
- brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
- bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
- butterfly damper — a damper, as in a flue, that rotates about a central axis across its face.
- caducibranchiate — (of many amphibians, such as frogs) having gills during one stage of the life cycle only
- call data record — (telecommunications) (CDR) A data record that contains information related to a telephone call, including the origination and destination addresses of the call, the time the call started and ended, the duration of the call, the time of day the call was made, toll charges that were added through the network, or charges for operator services.
- camborne-redruth — a former (until 1974) urban district in SW England, in Cornwall: formed in 1934 by the amalgamation of the neighbouring towns of Camborne and Redruth. Pop: 39 936 (2001)
- candlelit dinner — a meal for a couple which is illuminated by a candle or candles, esp in order to create a romantic mood
- canine distemper — distemper1 (def 1a).
- cantor's paradox — the paradox derived from the supposition of an all-inclusive universal set, since every set has more subsets than members while every subset of such a universal set would be a member of it
- cape cod lighter — a device for lighting a fire, as in a fireplace, consisting of a lump of nonflammable material on a metal rod, that is soaked in kerosene or the like and lighted with a match.
- captive breeding — Captive breeding is the breeding of wild animals in places such as zoos, especially animals which have become rare in the wild.
- carbon 14 dating — radiocarbon dating.
- carbon-14 dating — radiocarbon dating.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.