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16-letter words containing a, s, l, o

  • 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 metabolism — the amount of energy required by an individual in the resting state, for such functions as breathing and circulation of the blood
  • basement complex — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
  • 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.
  • bastard toadflax — any of several low-growing, often parasitic plants of the genus Comandra, having alternate leaves and clusters of small whitish flowers.
  • 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)
  • benoit samuelson — Joan (Joan Benoit) born 1957, U.S. distance runner: first Olympic marathon women's winner, 1984.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.
  • boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
  • bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
  • 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.
  • bordelaise sauce — a dark sauce made from meat stock, flour, wine, onions, seasonings, etc., served over broiled meat
  • bornholm disease — an epidemic virus infection characterized by pain round the base of the chest
  • borosilicic acid — any of several hypothetical acids that form borosilicates.
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bowman's capsule — a membranous, double-walled capsule surrounding a glomerulus of a nephron.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • braille embosser — Braille printer
  • british columbia — a province of W Canada, on the Pacific coast: largely mountainous with extensive forests, rich mineral resources, and important fisheries. Capital: Victoria. Pop: 4 400 057 (2011 est). Area: 930 532 sq km (359 279 sq miles)
  • british longhair — a breed of large cat with a semi-long thick soft coat
  • broad-shouldered — having broad shoulders
  • bronchial asthma — asthma.
  • bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
  • busman's holiday — If you have a holiday, but spend it doing something similar to your usual work, you can refer to it as a busman's holiday.
  • cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
  • call in question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
  • call one's shots — a discharge of a firearm, bow, etc.
  • call to quarters — a bugle call shortly before taps, notifying soldiers to retire to their quarters
  • camomile shampoo — a liquid or cream preparation of soap or detergent with camomile extract to wash the hair
  • canadian soldier — the mayfly.
  • cannonball serve — (in tennis) a very fast low serve
  • capsule wardrobe — a collection of clothes and accessories that includes only items considered essential
  • carbon bisulfide — carbon disulfide
  • carbon disulfide — a heavy, volatile, colorless liquid, CS2, highly flammable and poisonous, used as a solvent, insecticide, etc.
  • carbonless paper — a sheet of paper impregnated with dye which transfers writing or typing onto the copying surface below without the necessity for carbon pigment
  • carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
  • caroline islands — an archipelago of over 500 islands and islets in the W Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines, all of which are now part of the Federated States of Micronesia, except for the Palau group: formerly part of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands; centre of a typhoon zone. Area: (land) 1183 sq km (457 sq miles)
  • carolus linnaeus — Carolus [kar-uh-luh s] /ˈkær ə ləs/ (Show IPA), (Carl von Linné) 1707–78, Swedish botanist.
  • caryophyllaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Caryophyllaceae, a family of flowering plants including the pink, carnation, sweet william, and chickweed
  • cascade molecule — a synthetic polymer with a branching, treelike structure; a type of macromolecule in which chains radiate out from a central atom or cluster of atoms to transfer genetic material to living cells.
  • cash on delivery — If you pay for goods cash on delivery, you pay for them in cash when they are delivered. The abbreviation C.O.D. is also used.
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