14-letter words containing a, p, l, i
- autopilot code — (jargon, humour) Code that was written by a programmer on "auto-pilot" who wasn't really thinking about what they were doing.
- autopolyploidy — having more than two haploid sets of chromosomes that are derived from the same ancestral species.
- autotetraploid — an individual or strain whose chromosome complement consists of four copies of a single genome due to doubling of an ancestral chromosome complement
- avoidance play — a play by the declarer designed to prevent a particular opponent from taking the lead.
- back-pedalling — a retreat from or a retraction of a previously held view
- backflap hinge — Building Trades. flap (def 20a).
- balance spring — hairspring.
- ballet slipper — a heelless cloth or leather slipper worn by ballet dancers.
- baltimore chop — a batted ball that takes a high bounce upon hitting the ground on or immediately in front of home plate, often enabling the batter to reach first base safely.
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
- baptismal vows — the solemn promises made during baptism, either by the person baptized or by his or her sponsors
- bathygraphical — (of a maps) representing the contours of the seabed
- beveridge plan — the plan for comprehensive social insurance, proposed by Sir William Beveridge in Great Britain in 1941.
- bicuspid valve — mitral valve
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bipolarization — the action of rendering something bipolar
- bitmap display — (hardware) A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
- black skipjack — a small spotted tuna, Euthynnus yaito, of Indo-Pacific seas
- blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
- blaxploitation — a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes
- blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
- block sampling — the selection of a corpus for statistical literary analysis by random selection of a starting point and consideration of the continuous passage following it
- blotting paper — Blotting paper is thick soft paper that you use for soaking up and drying ink on a piece of paper.
- bone porcelain — bone china.
- bottling plant — a factory where drinks are bottled
- brachycephalic — having a head nearly as broad from side to side as from front to back, esp one with a cephalic index over 80
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- bubonic plague — Bubonic plague is a serious infectious disease spread by rats. It killed many people during the Middle Ages.
- bug-compatible — Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures in other programs or (especially) previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an option character in 1.0."
- building paper — any of various types of heavy-duty paper that usually consist of bitumen reinforced with fibre sandwiched between two sheets of kraft paper: used in damp-proofing or as insulation between the soil and a road surface
- by implication — If you say that something is the case by implication, you mean that a statement, event, or situation implies that it is the case.
- cafeteria plan — a fringe-benefit plan under which employees may choose from among various benefits those that best fit their needs, up to a specified dollar value.
- call into play — to begin to operate
- caller display — a facility which shows the number of an incoming call
- calligraphical — calligraphic
- caltrop family — the plant family Zygophyllaceae, typified by tropical herbaceous plants and shrubs having pinnate leaves, solitary or paired regular flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the creosote bush, lignum vitae, and puncture vine.
- cambridge lisp — A flavour of Lisp using BCPL. Sources owned by Fitznorman partners.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp fire girl — a girl who is a member of Camp Fire, Inc., an organization for girls founded in 1910, and since 1975 also including boys, to promote character-building activities
- campaign medal — a medal awarded for performance of specified service, usually in time of war or national emergency.
- campaign trail — the series of appearances that a politician makes at different locations as part of a political campaign, esp before an election
- cap the climax — to be or do more than could be expected or believed
- cape peninsula — (in South Africa) the peninsula and the part of the mainland on which Cape Town and most of its suburbs are located
- capillary tube — a glass tube with a fine bore and thick walls, used in thermometers, etc
- capital assets — any assets, tangible or intangible, that are held for long-term investment
- capital budget — a budget for major capital or investment expenditures