18-letter words containing a, s, t, o
- avoirdupois weight — a British and American system of weights based on a pound of 16 ounces
- axiological ethics — the branch of ethics dealing primarily with the relative goodness or value of the motives and end of any action.
- axis of revolution — an axis in a plane, about which an area is revolved to form a solid of revolution.
- bachelor's-buttons — any of various plants of the daisy family with button-like flower heads
- back to square one — If you are back to square one, you have to start dealing with something from the beginning again because the way you were dealing with it has failed.
- ballistocardiogram — a tracing made by a ballistocardiograph
- barbershop quartet — a group of four singers who perform a style of music sung in four-part harmony
- baritone saxophone — the second lowest instrument in the family of saxophones
- barium thiosulfate — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous solid, BaS 2 O 3 ⋅H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of explosives, matches, paints, and varnishes.
- bartholin's glands — two small reddish-yellow glands, one on each side of the vaginal orifice, that secrete a mucous lubricating substance during sexual stimulation in females
- basal conglomerate — a conglomerate deposited on an erosion surface and constituting the bottom layer of a stratigraphic series.
- battleground-state — a state of the U.S. in which the Democratic and Republican candidates both have a good chance of winning and that is considered key to the outcome of a presidential election: the swing states of Ohio and Indiana.
- be the image of sb — If you are the image of someone else, you look very much like them.
- beefsteak mushroom — an edible bracket fungus, Fistulina hepatica, that grows on trees and can rot the heartwood of living oaks and chestnuts.
- behaviour patterns — the characteristic ways in which a person or animal acts
- benchmark position — a public service job used for comparison with a similar position, such as a position in commerce, for wage settlements
- best-ball foursome — a match, scored by holes, between two pairs of players, in which the score of the lower scoring member of each pair is taken as their score for the hole.
- bichromate process — any of several methods of photography in which the light-sensitive medium is alkaline bichromate associated with a colloid such as gum, albumen, or gelatin.
- bill of quantities — a document drawn up by a quantity surveyor providing details of the prices, dimensions, etc, of the materials required to build a large structure, such as a factory
- biodiversification — the process by which the diversity of plants or animals develops or is increased within a particular region or group of organisms.
- bioinstrumentation — the use of instruments, as sensors, to detect and measure certain body functions, as of persons in spaceflight, and transmit the data to a point where it is evaluated
- biological parents — the biological mother and father of a child
- bipolar transistor — (electronics) A transistor made from a sandwich of n- and p-type semiconductor material: either npn or pnp. The middle section is known as the "base" and the other two as the "collector" and "emitter". When used as an amplifying element, the base to emitter junction is in a "forward-biased" (conducting) condition, and the base to collector junction is "reverse-biased" or non-conducting. Small changes in the base to emitter current (the input signal) cause either holes (for pnp devices) or free electrons (for npn) to enter the base from the emitter. The attracting voltage of the collector causes the majority of these charges to cross into and be collected by the collector, resulting in amplification. Contrast field effect transistor.
- birds of a feather — If you refer to two people as birds of a feather, you mean that they have the same interests or are very similar.
- biz-core stability — (security) Internet security products which secure the business core.
- black-necked stork — a large Australian stork, Xenorhyncus asiaticus, having a white plumage, dark green back and tail, and red legs
- blanche of castile — ?1188–1252, queen consort (1223–26) of Louis VIII of France, born in Spain. The mother of Louis IX, she acted as regent during his minority (1226–36) and his absence on a crusade (1248–52)
- bloggs family, the — An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the DEC Telephone Directory. Compare Mbogo, Dr. Fred.
- board of directors — A company's board of directors is the group of people elected by its shareholders to manage the company.
- board of elections — a bipartisan board appointed usually by local authorities and charged with control of elections and voting procedure.
- boltzmann constant — the ratio of the gas constant to the Avogadro constant, equal to 1.380 650 × 10–23 joule per kelvin
- bomb disposal unit — a unit of the police or armed services specializing in bomb disposal
- boole's inequality — the theorem that the probability of several events occurring is less than or equal to the sum of the probabilities of each event occurring.
- bore the pants off — to bore extremely
- borosilicate glass — any of a range of heat- and chemical-resistant glasses, such as Pyrex, prepared by fusing together boron(III) oxide, silicon dioxide, and, usually, a metal oxide
- boston baked beans — haricot beans baked with belly pork and molasses
- boston brown bread — a dark, sweetened, steamed bread made of cornmeal, rye or wheat flour, etc., and molasses
- bottle-nosed whale — any of various beaked whales of the family Hyperoodontidae, characterized by a bulbous forehead, especially Hyperoodon ampullatus of the North Atlantic.
- bounty-fed farmers — farmers who benefit from subsidies
- branch instruction — a machine-language or assembly-language instruction that causes the computer to branch to another instruction
- branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
- breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
- breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
- british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.
- burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
- business education — education for general knowledge of business practices.
- butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
- cabernet sauvignon — a black grape originally grown in the Bordeaux area of France, and now throughout the wine-producing world