14-letter words containing a, p, t
- 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.
- bancroft prize — one of a group of annual awards for literary achievement in American history and biography: administered by Columbia University.
- 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
- barometrograph — barograph.
- base component — the system of rules in a transformational grammar that specify the deep structure of the language
- bathygraphical — (of a maps) representing the contours of the seabed
- batrachophobia — fear of amphibians
- batrachophobic — relating to the fear of toads and frogs
- battery backup — A battery backup is a system in some power supplies that switches between a main power source and a battery.
- beauty pageant — A beauty pageant is the same as a beauty contest.
- beauty parlour — A beauty parlour is a place where women can go to have beauty treatments, for example to have their hair, nails or make-up done.
- beta-endorphin — a potent endorphin released by the anterior pituitary gland in response to pain, trauma, exercise, or other forms of stress.
- bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bipolarization — the action of rendering something bipolar
- birthday party — a party to celebrate someone's birthday
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- 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 panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- 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
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
- 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.
- blood platelet — any of the minute, disklike, colorless elements of the blood that are essential for normal clotting
- blotting paper — Blotting paper is thick soft paper that you use for soaking up and drying ink on a piece of paper.
- boarding party — group of officers or sailors who board a ship
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- bophuthatswana — (formerly) a Bantu homeland in N South Africa: consisted of six separate areas; declared independent by South Africa in 1977 although this was not internationally recognized; abolished in 1993. Capital: Mmabatho
- bottling plant — a factory where drinks are bottled
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- breaking point — If something or someone has reached breaking point, they have so many problems or difficulties that they can no longer cope with them, and may soon collapse or be unable to continue.
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- britney spears — beers
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- bronchospastic — of or relating to bronchospasms
- brood parasite — a young bird hatched and reared by birds of a different species as a result of brood parasitism.
- 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."
- bulk transport — the transport of large quantities of goods or commodities in lorries, ships, or by rail
- bush carpenter — a rough-and-ready unskilled workman
- bush telegraph — a means of communication between primitive peoples over large areas, as by drum beats
- by appointment — If something can be done by appointment, people can arrange in advance to do it at a particular time.
- 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.
- cadogan teapot — a lidless teapot that is made from or in imitation of an inverted Chinese wine pot and is filled through the bottom.
- 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