18-letter words containing a, s
- bells and whistles — additional features or accessories which are nonessential but very attractive
- benchmark position — a public service job used for comparison with a similar position, such as a position in commerce, for wage settlements
- bend someone's ear — to speak at length to an unwilling listener, esp to voice one's troubles
- 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.
- bilateral symmetry — the property of an organism or part of an organism such that, if cut in only one plane, the two cut halves are mirror images of each other
- 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 lives matter — a political and social movement originating among African Americans, emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for black people and campaigning against various forms of racism. Abbreviations: BLM, B.L.M.
- 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)
- blissful ignorance — unawareness or inexperience of something unpleasant
- 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.
- blue-plate special — an inexpensive restaurant meal served at a fixed price on a large plate, originally blue
- 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.
- board of examiners — a group of people who officially administer examinations
- board of governors — a group of people who oversee the running of a school
- 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
- bosnia-herzegovina — a country in SE Europe; a constituent republic of Yugoslavia until 1991; in a state of civil war (1992–95); Serbian and Croatian forces were also involved: mostly barren and mountainous, with forests in the east. Languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (formerly all regarded together as Serbo-Croat). Religion: Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic. Currency: marka (pegged to the euro). Capital: Sarajevo. Pop: 3 875 723 (2013 est). Area: 51 129 sq km (19 737 sq miles)
- 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.
- brazilian rosewood — a Brazilian tree, Dalbergia nigra, of the legume family.
- brazilian sapphire — a blue variety of tourmaline used as a gem: not a true sapphire.
- breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
- bread and circuses — something offered as a means of distracting attention from a problem or grievance
- break your silence — If someone breaks their silence about something, they talk about something that they have not talked about before or for a long time.
- breast enhancement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breast enlargement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
- breathing exercise — an exercise intended to promote effective and healthy breathing and breath control
- brewer's blackbird — a blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus, of the U.S., the male of which has greenish-black plumage with a purplish-black head.
- bring-and-buy sale — A bring-and-buy sale is an informal sale to raise money for a charity or other organization. People who come to the sale bring things to be sold and buy things that other people have brought.
- 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
- bronchocandidiasis — See under candidiasis.
- brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.