14-letter words containing a, t, y
- barometrically — By means of a barometer.
- base community — (especially in South America) a group of people taking part in religious devotions and Bible study, who seek to apply this in their socioeconomic and political situation.
- basic industry — an industry which is highly important in a nation's economy
- basidiomycetes — Mycology. any of a group of fungi constituting the phylum Basidiomycota of the kingdom Fungi (or, in older classification schemes, the class Basidiomycetes of the kingdom Plantae), characterized by bearing the spores on a basidium, including the smuts, rust, mushrooms, and puffballs.
- basque country — Theregion comprising three provinces in N Spain, on the Bay of Biscay, inhabited by Basques: 2,803 sq mi (7,260 sq km); pop. 2,104,000
- bastard ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bastard-ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bathing beauty — an attractive girl in a swimming costume
- bathygraphical — (of a maps) representing the contours of the seabed
- battery backup — A battery backup is a system in some power supplies that switches between a main power source and a battery.
- bayes' theorem — the fundamental result which expresses the conditional probability P(E/A) of an event E given an event A as P(A/E).P(E)/P(A); more generally, where En is one of a set of values Ei which partition the sample space, P(En/A) = P(A/En)P(En)/Σ P(A/Ei)P(Ei). This enables prior estimates of probability to be continually revised in the light of observations
- bayonet charge — a charge by riflemen with fixed bayonets
- bayonet socket — a socket for a bayonet fitting
- beauty contest — A beauty contest is a competition in which young women are judged to decide which one is the most beautiful.
- beauty culture — the skill or occupation of a beautician
- 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.
- belaya tserkov — city in WC Ukraine: pop. 204,000
- belaying cleat — a cleat used for belaying
- benzyl acetate — a colorless liquid, C 9 H 10 O 2 , having a flowerlike odor: used chiefly for flavoring tobacco and in soaps and cosmetics.
- bertrand meyer — The author of the Eiffel Language and many articles on object-oriented software techniques.
- betray oneself — to reveal one's true character, intentions, etc
- beyond a doubt — to be uncertain about; consider questionable or unlikely; hesitate to believe.
- billy no-mates — a person with no friends
- binary counter — (electronics, hardware) A digital circuit which has a clock input and a number of count outputs which give the number of clock cycles. The output may change either on rising or falling clock edges. The circuit may also have a reset input which sets all outputs to zero when asserted. The counter may be either a synchronous counter or a ripple counter.
- bioclimatology — the study of the effects of climatic conditions on living organisms
- biosystematics — the study of the variation and evolution of a population of organisms in relation to their taxonomic classification
- biosystematist — someone who studies or works professionally in the field of biosystematics
- bird sanctuary — an area of land in which birds are protected and encouraged to breed
- birthday party — a party to celebrate someone's birthday
- 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.
- blankety-blank — damned
- blantyre-limbe — a city in S Malawi: largest city in the country; formed in 1956 from the adjoining towns of Blantyre and Limbe. Pop: 647 000 (2005 est)
- 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
- boarding party — group of officers or sailors who board a ship
- body beautiful — a beautiful body
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- body snatching — the act or practice of robbing a grave to obtain a cadaver for dissection.
- bony labyrinth — an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. Synonyms: maze, network, web.
- born yesterday — brought forth by birth.
- bornyl acetate — a colorless liquid, C 12 H 20 O 2 , having a piny, camphorlike odor, used chiefly as a scent in the manufacture of perfume, and as a plasticizer.
- bornyl formate — a liquid, C 11 H 18 O 2 , having a piny odor, used chiefly as a scent in the manufacture of soaps and disinfectants.
- boundary-stone — a stone marking a boundary, sometimes giving information such as the initials of the local authority in whose jurisdiction the boundary is
- brachydactylia — abnormal shortness of the fingers and toes.
- brachydactylic — having abnormally short fingers or toes
- bradley effect — the distortion of opinion polls caused by the reluctance of respondents to admit to a preference that is regarded as socially unacceptable
- brandy snifter — snifter (def 1).
- breathtakingly — thrillingly beautiful, remarkable, astonishing, exciting, or the like: a breathtaking performance.
- brewer's yeast — a yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used in brewing