16-letter words containing a, s, i
- background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
- bahasa indonesia — the official language of Indonesia: developed from the form of Malay formerly widely used as a trade language in SE Asia
- balearic islands — a group of islands in the W Mediterranean, consisting of Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Formentera, Cabrera, and 11 islets: a province of Spain. Capital: Palma, on Majorca. Pop: 1 071 500 (2003 est). Area: 5012 sq km (1935 sq miles)
- balkan mountains — a mountain range extending across Bulgaria from the Black Sea to the eastern border. Highest peak: Mount Botev, 2376 m (7793 ft)
- balkan peninsula — a large peninsula in SE Europe, between the Adriatic and Aegean Seas
- ballast resistor — ballast (def 5a).
- ballast-resistor — Nautical. any heavy material carried temporarily or permanently in a vessel to provide desired draft and stability.
- ballistic camera — a camera for tracking missiles launched at night.
- balsamic vinegar — Balsamic vinegar is a type of vinegar which tastes sweet and is made from grape juice.
- banana republics — any of the small countries in the tropics, especially in the Western Hemisphere, whose economies are largely dependent on fruit exports, tourism, and foreign investors.
- band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
- bare necessities — only the essentials
- bargain basement — If you refer to something as a bargain basement thing, you mean that it is cheap and not very good quality.
- bargain-basement — very low-priced.
- bargaining scope — the range of topics within the scope of a particular set of negotiations leading to a collective agreement
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- barrier of ideas — the representations of objects which certain accounts of perception interpose between the objects themselves and our awareness of them, so that, as critics argue, we can never know whether there is in reality anything which resembles our perceptions
- bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
- basal anesthesia — anesthesia induced as a preliminary to further and deeper anesthesia
- basal metabolism — the amount of energy required by an individual in the resting state, for such functions as breathing and circulation of the blood
- bashkir republic — a constituent republic of E central Russia, in the S Urals: established as the first Soviet autonomous republic in 1919; rich mineral resources. Capital: Ufa. Pop: 4 012 900 (2002). Area: 143 600 sq km (55 430 sq miles)
- basic curriculum — in England and Wales, the National Curriculum plus religious education
- basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
- basic vocabulary — the set of lexical items in a language that are most resistant to replacement, referring to the most common and universal elements of human experience, such as parts of the body (foot, eye), universal features of the environment (water, star), common activities (eat, sleep), and the lowest numerals.
- basilar membrane — a membrane inside the cochlea that vibrates in response to sound
- basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
- bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
- bastard pointing — an imitation of tuck pointing, having a fillet made from the mortar of the joint.
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- be of assistance — Someone or something that is of assistance to you is helpful or useful to you.
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- behavioural sink — a small area in which people or animals live in overcrowded conditions
- belgian malinois — one of a Belgian breed of medium-sized dogs having a short coat, tan to dark brown in color, a black mask, and erect ears, bred originally as a sheepherding dog.
- belgian sheepdog — any of a Belgian breed of large herding dog with a black coat, sometimes used as a guide dog
- bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- 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.
- benoit samuelson — Joan (Joan Benoit) born 1957, U.S. distance runner: first Olympic marathon women's winner, 1984.
- beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- bicapitalisation — The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalisation. Too many marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare studlycaps.
- big bag of pages — (BIBOP) Where data objects are tagged with some kind of descriptor (giving their size or type for example) memory can be saved by storing objects with the same descriptor in one "page" of memory. The most significant bits of an object's address are used as the BIBOP page number. This is looked up in a BIBOP table to find the descriptor for all objects in that page. This idea is similar to the "zones" used in some Lisp systems (e.g. LeLisp).
- bihar and orissa — a former province of NE India: now divided into the states of Bihar and Odisha (formerly Orissa).
- biliary calculus — an abnormal stonelike mass, usually of cholesterol, formed in the gallbladder or bile passages.
- bimetallic strip — a strip consisting of two metals of different coefficients of expansion welded together so that it buckles on heating: used in thermostats, etc
- binocular fusion — fusion (def 5a).
- binocular-fusion — the act or process of fusing; the state of being fused.
- bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.